


006: REMASTERED

by gazastripping



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bisexuality, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Coach Levi, Coach/Player Relationship, College Student Eren Yeager, Coming Out, Football | Soccer Player Eren Yeager, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Skater Culture, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-04-14 02:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 56,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14126508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gazastripping/pseuds/gazastripping
Summary: The one and only time Eren Jaeger decides to explore a porn site, it goes irredeemably wrong.Or, alternatively: a coming-of-age story on how to cope with your soccer coach being a gay porn star.





	1. Symphony "Pornhub" in F♯

**Author's Note:**

> Yo main mothafucka is back with the **THIRD** and **_FINAL_** revival of 006 on its road towards becoming a book! This version is considerably more realistic and polished, and a sequel will come along sometime soon.
> 
> Find me as [@gazastrippin](https://gazastrippin.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!
> 
> Listen to the official [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/hentaivert/playlist/6yPFlwS4GGLAsIm4Rg8u0v?si=U7HuR0j0RX-MN13SLLlVaA) you can play at parties and feel ashamed!
> 
> No pre-existing knowledge of Attack on Titan is necessary to read this. You might find this offensive, ableist, racist, sexist, kinkist, vegan, human or otherwise ethically unacceptable. Not that it is, though, but it's all up to your subjective opinion. This is written for entertainment purpose. It's not guaranteed the taste of humor/character representation is for everyone.

Sometimes my mom says I am what American Pie would be if it manifested into a nuclear weapon, and I have to say: she’s not wrong.

My stomach is rumbling like the NYC metro station. I haven’t eaten proper breakfast this morning and am now piling fries in my guts, which is gross, I am gross, and will never fundamentally outlive a cheat day.

For reference, it’s the afternoon.

This grease would stain the notebook I’m writing in, so I wipe my fingers on my pants and peek at Jean to check if he saw that. He did, and I’m currently being judged. Massive amounts of judgmental staring are being projected in my approximate direction.

I write down the word "JEAN", in all-caps, with ugly, disproportionate letters, and give these sickening little symbols a better thought.

I guess a "JEAN" is what you call someone with rich, bleached permanent-blowout hair, a just as rich bloodline, problems with girls and problems with spelling certain words, like “acknowledgment”, “adjacency” and “ambidextrous”. Why do they all start with the same letter, you might ask? That’s because I’ve got an alphabetical list of words this guy just cannot spell right.

A "JEAN" (and it’s a thoroughly obligatory thing to overuse caps-lock) would be someone who inhabits Wildwood's wealthiest area, a fashionista dickhead who happens to have inherited a large ranch in the countryside, and by just pure fucking luck seems to reside on this planet as the prototype of Your Perfect Anything.

Just seconds later I write "EREN" down in my notebook. I always carry my backpack along, and there's always this worn piece of shit.

Me? Oh, I do stuff. I do lots of stuff. I'm nice and I play soccer. I’m also miserable, coincidentally always horny, probably depressed, never, ever willing to do anything, arrogant and internally dead. I scream a lot in my head. Like, a whole lot. I’ve been doing that since my first brain concussion in 2013.

I wear tube socks. I fucking love them. I _love_ them.

I guess now you’d expect this choppy intro they do for blockbuster comedy movies about college or high school, so I'll try to reenact it via text: picture an outdated and very overplayed Blink-182 song playing in the background with about a hundred shots of the main character from every angle our dimension provides. That would be me, then. I’ll pose. I’ll definitely pose! I'll make sure you can get stills you can post on the Internet later. Throw in some corny jokes, shots of the sun setting in New Jersey that induce fake melancholy, maybe wreck it by pausing the audio and making me say something out-of-context funny and globally appealing—because that’s what movie trailers feed off of these days, and because that’s just how I am.

If you want a proper introduction with my blank-ass personality: record scratch, freeze frame, yep, that’s me. You're probably wondering how I got here. Hello! It’s me, the high school soccer star who never really left his hometown, takes his wife to Olive Garden for anniversaries and drinks at the same bar you used to eight years ago. My name is Eren Jaeger. I'm a bit of a moron who loves himself way too much. For having existed on this planet for twenty-one year, I sure haven't done shit. I just masturbate, have celiac disease and eat fried rice—and that’s all I do.

Boring facts? Yeah, alright! If you squint and take a look at most of my clothes, my favorite color is red. I play soccer awfully well, so it's the basis of my college scholarship. My biggest accomplishment in high school was pulling a Magnum over my head. I’ve disappointed my parents and all of my ex-girlfriends, and my favorite metaphor is that my personality is the exact equivalent of white people seasoning their food.

I’m in love with Jeff Mangum and dig emo music, too. I usually cry to American Football. The band, not the sport. Oh my god, I hate how I always have to specify. No one cries to goddamn rugby. I used to have this classmate in high school—bringing this up makes my eyes water—she got into football on our junior year and I thought I was going to scream. Well, I did, in my head. There are people who keep their interests to themselves, and she was not one of them. It was good morning football and goodnight football. AP class football. Calculus football. Since then I throw up in my mouth whenever American football comes into view. 

“You see?” My beautiful Jean raises a handful of nasty, greasy fries. “The center of love, the tide pull of my ocean. Not even a dollar, right down the street. McDonald’s. I’m McLovin’ it.”

I literally just stare. “Put that down.”

“No.”

We look at each other for some while. Birds chirp in the background and I want to scream.

“Please,” I try.

“No.” A fry drops from his greedy fist. “I am marking my territory.”

“I’m not going to eat that,” I finally say.

Jean shoves the whole fistful in his mouth. One single French fry drops on my Vans x Golf Wang 2015 collection shoe, and a large part of my love for Jean evaporates.

We’re sitting on a park bench next to Jean’s MTV-worth crib. It’s the largest, ugliest cream-colored house on the block. Not like it can be compared to any neighbor houses around, since someone in the family obviously suffers from a superiority complex. The rest of the houses aren’t as enormous. Only four of them have a pool. Because he lives in the city, and I feel the need to emphasize the city part (this is like a suburb area for demigods), everything is within reach. Us “hanging out” now means me coming all the way over here to sit by the canal right in front of his fucking house. He feeds ducks with French fries while I listen to his boring opinions on spring break, soccer, economy and other difficult life contemplations, like women.

The short week of spring break is behind and this is our way of mourning. Tomorrow is Monday and we have a 9 AM class, and it doesn’t hold me back from clipping through a wall after my tenth coffee. Hold on—I’ll wipe my tears really quick. Don’t just sit there; act like you're interested in the trees or something.

Okay, we’re good.

I actually think I might have hay fever. And I also think we, as a budding generation, have to start respecting Missy Elliot more. 

Okay! Let’s go.

It just so happens that everybody hates the jetlag feeling after a school break. This can't be good for anyone. Spring break is very hard on me. Same goes with fall. Fall break is fucking horrible. It always fucking rains. On this scale, spring break is perfect and nourishes my soul. I’m always a late bloomer on that whole “new year, new me” agenda, it only occurs to me by April or so, and so I’ve adopted the habit to catastrophically turn around my personality and look at April. Winter break is good for nothing but breaking my neck with a snowboard, and summers are clearly designed for soccer, camp, unrequited crushes, a lot of alcohol and jacking off.

Jean and I, we understand each other. And on idyllic days like this, I wonder about high school. And I did just pull a muscle from reaching, thank you. I still have no idea how I graduated. High school is a pretty dark memory nobody wants to talk about. Except for me, I guess. I love talking about embarrassing things. My high school experience was as bland as Mr. Charles’s "extra spicy" kebab on the corner store, which, by the way, pays an awful disgrace to the local kebab community. I hope town deputy does something about this, and soon.

I've played soccer ever since I can remember myself walking, so with time it leveled-up from a hobby to a well-paid, professional thing I brag about. In grade six, I discovered xnxx.com, and that's all I had until grade ten. I was weird. Most of my Adidas sponsorship socks were semen-stained, but it was cool, because I was out of school and it didn’t bother me my feet smelled like dick. Well, they didn't, but I didn't have friends anyway, so I can say whatever I want. Grade ten opened my eyes. I think my assigned FBI agent told his team I’m miles beyond the regular teenager loneliness spectrum, and because I believe the Earth is flat and the government is corrupt, they probably reprogrammed my mind to think I have to stop masturbating and talk to real girls. So, that's what I did. Turns out I liked girls and girls liked me. And it went like Connie said: “You’re good when you realize scout girls are better than the cookies they sell.”

I kissed a lot of girls, but they’re animals. They know too much. I remember this one morning I told my classmate Jennifer her hair looked nice braided, and the same evening she asked me if I’m really a kid person, judging by the three-year-old picture of me holding my baby niece that she’d found on my Facebook wall. My love for girls didn’t change the fact that sex didn’t seem to be my thing, so I happened to reject one too many (teenage insecurity) and settle for a “SINGLE AF” Blingee edit.

I'm a virgin at twenty-one. It _worries_ me. People probably think I’m saving it for marriage, unless everyone has preemptively assumed I already fucked someone while drunk. Whenever someone brings this up, I like to recite what Jean once said: quote unquote, Eren's sense of stage three is stuffing his pinky finger up a pussy. I've done a little more than that, but it's a good running joke.

My hand sinks in Jean’s fries as I continue to aimlessly ponder.

The break changed Jean again. He’s bad with too much free time on his hands, because he keeps finding new interests that turn out to be dangerous for his wellbeing. I didn’t want to meet up today because he seemed weird and strangely excited over the phone, but, as a wise man once said, beggars can’t be choosers, bitch, this ain’t Chipotle, so, of course, it's a beautiful Sunday and I'm forced to listen to Jean's flawed opinions about America's economy. I planned on doing nothing for the whole weekend, and the entire break at that, but my birther had other plans. My Friday was spent recoloring the guest bedroom, because she said so. Saturday was torture. I don’t want to think about Saturday. It was probably the most awkward evening over the past few years.

Our bilingual Japanese family friends reserved a table at a nice restaurant around ten miles away and I was forced into wearing appropriate clothing other than stained shorts and Element hoodies. They introduced me to their only child, the twenty-year old Mikasa. Sleek, stunning Oriental beauty with a waistline that made my mouth water. I’d never heard of her before, but apparently we knew each other. You know how it goes, parents this, parents that, throw the kids in the back and assume they'll remember each other after puberty.

She had a funny twist to her speech because of her native language, but I liked that bit of her. As the evening went on and we emptied a remarkable amount of wine bottles (if you count the shallow glass of red wine Mikasa and I sipped in turns), she told me nasty #deetz about her parents and how they treat her adolescence. Nobody in her family is willing to foot any of her bills. It’s also her parents not accepting her the way she is and how she's chosen to be less of what other girls her age are by wanting to study sports journalism and whatnot. Mikasa said, and I quote, “fuck gender roles”. During our conversation I felt glad my mom lets me wear pink hoodies. Well—no, the pink hoodie is a scam. The pink hoodie is the byproduct of me being unable to do laundry.

That's about how I spent last night. Sure, I’d much rather have spent it on the Internet, browsing memes and materializing my horrible existence in our Discord chat. And yet here I am now, yanked far, oh, far out of my comfort zone. Mourning.

Mom likes Jean. He has this odd skill of getting me out of the house with a: “Hey, Eren, let's get fries and go check out the park.” But it's never like that. Jean's rich, but he never pays. He has some issues. Lots of issues.

Yeah, see, fuck him. I had to pay for the fries; me, the unemployed little idiot. Who's the winner? _You_ are, Jean, obviously, you are. You didn’t have to spend a single cent to entertain yourself. I can’t begin to describe how devastating it is to come all the way to the city for this blowout-having idiot to step out in untied sneakers and eat my fries. Though I _do_ love the park, so that's _sort of_ my weak spot, I guess. And—shit, you know what? While I'm at it, McDonald’s sucks. Boycott McDonald’s. I know Sasha (Connie's Puerto Rican babe with the fattest ass in town) used to work at McDonald's, and she always told us how her coworker didn't wash his hands after peeing and handled food like that.

Jean buries his hand in the box and I slap it.

“Stop touching my French fries,” I say.

“Stop touching my French fries,” he mocks.

I look at him. The word “pissed” is practically carved in the middle of my forehead. “The fries at your birthday party were better than this.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s because Connie made them. Shit was good. I’m pretty glad we got the pool done by that time,” Jean thinks aloud. “You jumped in from the roof and shit. Cool! Thanks for ruining my dad’s electric grill, by the way, that was really necessary, he’s still not over it, and I’m kind of getting him a new one for Christmas.”

Connie works at Applebee’s, is why his fries are so spankin’ good.

“A grill for Christmas,” I slowly make the remark.

“Fuck off, Eren," Jean replies in the same slow manner. "A grill for Christmas is exactly as useful to my dad as that birthday box of condoms was for you.”

I sit back, hand over my heart.

“You…just dragged me to the moon and back,” I wheeze. “Get your facts straight. I jumped from your mom’s _balcony_ , not the roof. I got stuck in the roof window on my way out, so it didn’t work. And it’s too high up, anyway. I’d hit the bottom of the pool and break my legs.”

“Facts. Also, why didn't you?”

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. But yeah, god, that was great.” I eat a handful of greasy fries. “We're doing it at the ranch next year. I don't care if that place doesn't have a pool, we're doing it at the ranch.”

“Okay, holy shit, you sound like that weird dude at school who beats off to cars. His family owns a few hectares next to our farm, and he talks exactly like that.”

 _“I_ beat off to cars. Think about sleeping in hay, though. Oh, god." I close my eyes and lowkey fist pump by my waist. "Yes.”

“I've slept my good spare in hay, thanks,” Jean says through a mouthful.

“It’s because you are from _the country_ and you listen to _country_ music.”

“I need to turn my Spotify activity off.”

"Actually, yeah, you do. This one time I was staying in with my sprained ankle, so I saw everything you listened to, and you kinda listened to Total Eclipse Of The Heart for, like, three hours. Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I'm only falling apart. Wah-wah. Someone sit on my dick."

"It's a good song. Bonnie Tyler busting it open is far better than seeing you listen to your "SEX" playlist when I know for a fact you're at the mall with your mom." 

I kick my legs back and stretch. “Anyway."

"Yes?"

"My last birthday was pretty miserable, so you can shut up about yours. Props to turning twenty-one. It’s quite possibly the worst fucking birthday I’ve ever had.”

Jean frowns. “I can’t remember you having a party or anything.”

Well, yeah. I remember waking up that day. I stayed in, watched some movies, made, like, corn chicken wrap and watched Vine compilations. Went for a short run around the block by 4 PM. I took a shower, got dressed, went downstairs; my mom got home by six and gave me a huge box of Amazon stuff I still haven't checked out, and it's been, like, a while.

“Because I didn’t,” I explain. “I’m just... Man, I don’t like taking responsibility. Any sort of. I’d be the worst dad if I ever, by some delusional chance, had the chance to be one. I can’t even organize a birthday bash without worrying Connie’s gonna puke in my mom’s dahlia vase. Plus I’m old enough for birthdays to depress me. And they depress me big time.”

“You're not thirty or anything,” Jean pipes. “You just turned twenty-one, Jesus Christ, give yourself some _oxygen_ , honey.”

“Yeah, sure, I’m not _old_ old, but I’m old. I’m a ravaging emo boy in the body of a man. I haven’t been in the mood for anything lately, I just drift around and do stuff I don't even like, listen to music I don't even enjoy and, like, I don't know. I don’t know if it’s just my Real Depression Hours, or maybe it’s the times we’re living in, but something is seriously screwed up.”

“I actually, for once, understand what you’re saying.”

“Right? Something is way, way off. Everyone is so detached, I don’t know, it’s weird. I feel myself growing old and it’s just _awful_. I hope Regionals are good this year. And I’m worried about volleyball results. I think I might—uh, you know, leave volley? I don’t feel like it anymore. I don’t feel like anything anymore. The team’s breaking up, anyway, because—“

“Coach crisis,” Jean cuts in. “Yep.”

We sit in silence for a brief while, watching the canal’s water ripple in front.

Days like these get me melancholic. Just like a movie, preferably one you've watched with an ex of yours. It's got that teenage heartbreak stink. You sit in the park and talk to your best friend, which seems like your everyday dilly-dally romcom. But the plot **thickens** when the narrator (you, namely) reveals you are unemployed, sexually inexperienced and don't shave your face (because you don't have a girlfriend), your college credit is in a Greece-level crisis, and you’re overall really miserable—but at least good-looking.

But, oh, _man,_ the looks are going to fade, people are going to turn away from you, and if you don't score yourself some real fellas who are ready to drop off cliffs with you, you'll be really fucked. Thing is, everything asks for so much effort. Getting a decent job that's some true capitalistic 9 to 5, landing a hot wife you'll flat out disrespect anyway, kids, paying for their education... All that translates to effort, and effort is one thing I don't associate myself with. 

And so I rather sit at a park and have cutting conversations in my head. With myself. How… _objectively_ bad is that, now?

I take a deep breath and sigh.

Jean murmurs an undefined, out-of-place “yeah”, but nothing fits better than that.

* * *

In the middle of the kitchen, swirling the dubious contents of a wine glass, Eren Jaeger feels biased about his mother. A part of him is currently throwing his body around the sunny, yellow kitchen in bone-clattering terror, and the other's busy dusting off some soft dune pillows for his mommy to lie down on. See, Eren loves his mother, but living with your parents at twenty can get a little tight.

So I swirl some sort of shitty drink in a chipped wine glass. Big deal. The liquid’s dark, sort of red, or more rusty brown than red; I don't know colors. It winds lightly of fermented grapes.

“It’s wine,” I tell myself.

“On god?” I ask myself back.

“On god.”

I gulp it down.

Oh, fuck. Yeah, that's... That’s wine, on god. And it's homemade; definitely aunt Dina’s handicraft. My mom chestbumps Jesus after a bottle of this.

I call my mom _mother_ when we interact because it makes her feel old and then she nags a lot. I think the most humorous part is that she looks around ten years younger than me—and it’s facts. It’s straight up facts. My mother’s outstandingly beautiful, so I get it when people say I take after her. She’s also arrogant and funny, and both qualities I’ve surely copied straight off her DNA. You won't see me complain about her looks or 90-60-90 ratio my college friends thirst over, but there have been times when I wish I was adopted. Whenever there used to be a “parents evening” shindig back in middle school, she was all dressed up and looking like a snack. Oh, get out! What snack? A full course fucking meal. I used to be _very_ proud of my _very_ beautiful mommy, even so when people from school clapped their germy hands on my back and said: “Wow, your mom’s such a MILF.”

And I was like: “Yeah, Jerome, she is.”

When I asked Mrs. Judy, my English teacher, what a MILF was, she told me, “Mother Is Loving and Forgiving”, because to Mrs. Judy, we were all children of god. But grade six rolled in and I finally got a hang on Google. One of my first searches was a gratuitous “what is milf”.

Look. Yes. I wish curiosity never existed.

Yes.

We don't talk about this.

“Eren, honey?”

I place the wine glass down. “Mommers?”

“Eren, are you— _shit!_ Oh, _shit!”_

By the apparent sound and the ground shaking underneath, something heavy has fallen, and it’s not my self-respect—can’t fall if you’re on the bottom. I even felt the walls vibrate, though, so it’s #real #concern #hours, my dudes.

“You good?” I yell.

“Are you home?” She yells back.

“Nope. I can’t possibly think of how I could be home right now.”

"How are you even my son?"

“Where are you? Are you okay?"

“Upstairs. I'm fine!”

My bedroom’s upstairs. Yikes! But so is hers. And the guest room, which I had to repaint on Friday. And a bathroom. So, where exactly _is_ my mother is hard to figure out.

The whole house smells like ammoniac and chloride. She’s been working on the canvas again. Shit. _Shit!_ Means she’s got that, I don’t know, fucking spurt of artistic energy. She gets that going on and then she starts tidying the house and completely redecorating everything. I should’ve predicted this yesterday. I should’ve seen this coming. I avoid being home during these things.

My #artiste mother, god, I swear to St. Elliot Alderson, she’s hacking my computer at this very moment. She would be very capable of learning the entirety of Python just to get into my HP for the nudes. In fact, she’s probably _just_ found my nude folder.

It’s a joke! I don’t take nudes.

 _That’s_ also a joke. Oh, man! This is going to be a _thrilling_ freaking ride! Don't trust me on anything I say, I’m incredibly goofy and never, ever serious.

“What are you doing upstairs?” I cautiously ask.

I’m an experienced young man, okay? I know what kind of untamed, chaotic power a mother in her son’s bedroom can be. Though—Jesus, I’m an _adult_ , what’s there to hide? Nudes? Nudes, really? She’s seen me naked. True, that was some twenty years ago, but I believe I haven’t changed. But I don’t want her making fun of me either way, so that’s gotta go. She’s _gotta go._

“I'm hanging a painting in your room,” she calls back with delay. “Pretty _neat_ , I’d say!”

What? A painting? In _my_ salad?

Real shit though, my room is a literal and transcendental trash hole with some Marvel merchandise boxers hanging out the cupboard drawers, a lot of socks, dubious amount of daylight, #gamersetup, and it reeks of…citrus deodorant and Baja Blast Mountain Dew.

“Mom?”

She hums an inquiring: “Mmm?”

“Why are you doing this? Who hurt you?”

“Oh, the painting? It’s very _fleeky_ , I found it in the lobby.”

I’m trying to think of a reaction image I would use when my mom says things like “cool”, “rad”, “lit”, “on fleek” or “slay”. It would probably be that dog drinking coffee, smiling, saying “this is fine” while everything around him is burning and collapsing.

“Don’t ever say “fleeky” in my vicinity, mom.”

“Fleeky,” she—of course—says.

I laugh pretty hard before deciding to never speak to her again, move out of this residence and change my nationality.

“Mom, you clean the lobby— _one_ single room—and end up just scattering all your art bullshit around the house. I took it down last week. Literally last week.” I eye the stairs and check if she’s coming down. “Do you need help hanging it? I’m getting food otherwise.”

Something cracks. Another few diligent phrases fly. Finally mom speaks up again.

“There’s Chinese in the fridge,” she huffs. “I won’t be home tonight, but I’m making lasagna tomorrow.”

“So should I starve until tomorrow, or what? I’m going to 7-Eleven. Bye.”

“Just eat the Chinese, you big baby.”

“That shit better be gluten free.”

"It’s _noodles_. Don’t order pizza.”

I don’t remember any aspect of this conversation that ever mentioned ordering pizza, but now that she mentioned it: “I’m ordering Domino’s.”

“I’ll lock the fridge if you don’t eat the Chinese.”

“But _please,_ lock the Chinese along with everything else. Mom, I don’t eat Chinese food. My body little, but my soul heavy.”

I actually do eat Chinese food! I just don’t feel like Chinese food at the moment. I don’t have the energy to deal with a microwave and I hate when bell pepper seeps in my noodles. It really does taste gross.

I consider pizza.

“Yeah, I’m gonna order pizza,” I say. "Periodt."

“Eren, Jesus _Christ!_ Stop turning to Domino’s because it’s comforting, it’s always such a bargain to make you _not_ do it! Why is this still a problem at twenty?”

“Because my body _little_ , my soul _heavy_. Carton can be recycled. Stop bitching about rainforests being destroyed. Once they’re gone, Domino’s will figure out a way to deliver anyway.”

She belts out in laughter. “And your carton milk, Eren—“

“Squirrel milk,” I correct.

“Oh my god.”

“This is taking way too long. I’m getting pizza. You don’t even have to pay, I’ve got something left from dad’s birthday transaction error last month.”

A disapproving sound.

I roll my eyes. “Oh, stop.”

“Your dad sucks.”

Yeah, my parents… It’s more of a civil union than marriage. It’s like a large, arbitrary diss track camouflaged as marriage. I doubt they’ve had sex since conceiving me.

“Dad _might_ suck. Domino’s don’t. And I mean, yeah, it’s lovely how you don’t care about me and everything, but it’s not like I’m making you eat it. Domino’s has them gluten free, anyway.”

“It pisses me off how you’re on your gluten free _diet_ and still get to eat everything you want,” mom says. “Eren, Levi _e-mails_ me saying you’ve put on weight. He wants you on a diet.”

“A _diet,”_ I cheekily drag. “More like _adieu_. Mom, this is love weight. There is more of me to love now. Coach gets spazzy over a milligram, so block him. Where does he e-mail you?”

“Yahoo.”

I think the center point of my humor the following few months will be the fact that my soccer coach uses Yahoo.

My mom does this chaud thing where she sucks air in whenever I say a bad word. Look, this can be witnessed when I’m playing The Witcher and she drops by my room because she’s bored, has free time, or gathers laundry. I curse a shitload when I play this game, so it’s sort of funny watching her go “oh!” and “shhh!” every two seconds.

“Annnyway…” I slide my torso on the handrail of the stairs and pretend to be dead. “This bitch over here is twenty-one now.”

“Get upstairs, I’m tired of yelling!”

“Sure, yeah.” I move a couple inches up and slide down because of my backpack. “Hey, so… Why are you hanging the painting in my room, again?”

“Because it’s nice. It’s that rice field painting you always wheeze at, for whatever reason. You repainting the guest room made me wonder if we should do the entire house, you know? All bedrooms, maybe?”

“I’m leaving this household, homie. Like _hell_ I’m not painting everything. Hire a hot gardener to do this for you and seduce him with Kool-Aid.”

“I think you have too much freedom.”

“And I think you just want to revise how much embarrassing shit I keep in my room. I don’t have Jean’s Playboy magazines anymore. I have, like, two. Three if we’re taking the Toyota magazine I once beat off to, to pretend I wasn’t beating off when you came in.”

I hear all movement stop. “Real shit?” Mom asks.

“Yeah, real shit.”

She laughs and I run up the stairs.

My room’s on the right, her and dad’s—on the left. The guest room and the shared bathroom takes up the rest of the second floor, leaving only a square little hallway between all rooms. There are some simplistic paintings on the walls to fill them, and at least seven family pictures aren’t missing either.

We used to have a bird and his name was George, but he got a brain tumor and died. His cage is in the basement. We also had a dog. Her name was Wicky. Our neighbors hit her with a car. A white Persian, Lucas, went missing two years ago, but I’m sure mom gave Lucas away because he peed in her moccasins.

I walk up to the doorframe leading to my room, my hands in the back pockets of my jeans, ready for the same old picture of chaos and my little mother amidst it all. But alas! The light burning my irises when I walk inside comes from my blinds being open for once.

I stop and stupidly stare, because mom’s bouncing on my bed, trying to balance an oversaturated and rather disgusting piece of art above it. What takes me back even further is the uncharacteristic tidiness. My cranberry red, faded bed sheets are now bangin’ black and all the dirty laundry I’ve kept on my office chair for months is washed and folded, and sits atop of my desk. I’m kinda shook, or whatever.

“Did you clean my room?” I ask to literally look like an idiot, because it’s obvious she did.

Overflowing with pride, mom puts her hands on her hips and grins, so I grin, too, because it’s comical that she’s finally taller than me—and she’s standing on my most prized possession—my king bed.

“I did,” she says.

I whine.

The tiny wrinkles around her eyes and dimple on her left cheek make me smile even wider. She climbs down my bed using my nightstand and pokes me in the ribs.

I whine again. She’s so cute.

“I dipped in for laundry and couldn’t resist…” Mom turns around to inspect her work. “Do you like the painting? I think this is the one.”

I look at it. Yes! It’s the one. This is the one I take down monthly. I can physically feel myself cracking up.

“Mom, this…” I start, but don’t manage to finish without swallowing a fat wheeze. “It looks like a massive…”

“Like a what?”

“It looks like a massive dick if you squint, I’m gonna be quite frank with you right now.”

I immediately receive not only a loud _“Eren!”,_ but also the juiciest of her signature backslaps.

* * *

It’s at least a good two hours past midnight and I forgot to sleep again. College is going to lash out at me in just a few hours, and I’m not at all ready for that. Morning classes are carefully crafted by the devil himself, and I’m not trying to be about that life.

I close Safari and lean back in my chair. Meanwhile, I languidly rub my face. I could probably fall asleep any second now, if I really tried.

Mom’s asleep. Talking to Jean would result in absolutely nothing, and I don’t want to anyway. I have too much swag, you see. My Discord people are busy busting loads in their girlfriends, and the rest of my friends and team members aren’t on my fucking _level_ right now. The only realistic thing for me to do would be taming my backlashing hunger and finally heading to bed.

I just sit in my boxers for a minute and stare up at the ceiling. I love staying up late. It’s fucking beautiful. Except if it’s a Sunday; I’m just putting my whole ass out there for god to raw me then.

I push off the table and pull my hoodie over my ass to cover up. And so, Eren Jaeger heads out in the hall to sneak downstairs.

The kitchen’s floor is still warm from our fireplace and central heating, and it makes my toes wiggle involuntarily. I stand in front of the fridge and inspect its belongings.  _Absolute_ shit food we have. I hate the upper shelf of our fridge. The upper shelf has the tiny fridge light, right? But my dad has a habit of buying canned beans practically every time he’s at the store. Every. Time. So if he goes shopping twice a week, it results in four cans a week. I don’t understand, like, does he _really_ think we eat them? Like, mom’s just used to it, she just stacks them at empty drawers and tells me I’ll be thankful if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse.

And so the top shelf is stacked full of canned beans and corn, and the light doesn’t even shine through like it should.

I stand in the dim beam of light and stare. The only quick solution is the stale Chinese in a white box. The dragon printed on it practically reaches out to me and says: “Eat me, fuckass.”

So I take the box of noodles and close the door. I try to time the microwave so it doesn’t beep and wake up our entire neighborhood, but it _does_ beep and I have to bang at its sides for it to stop. After fishing out a fork, I tiptoe back upstairs and stub my left toe on my room’s door.

The air in the house is thick. It smells like old leather and suede and holds light remnants of paint, oil and mom’s mango shampoo. Mom got out of her bath around two or three hours ago and wished me goodnight on her way to her room. I breathe in the humid air before disappearing back in my room, secure from the hot, extortionate atmosphere. After-bath air makes me sick. That’s why I never take baths. And because I have the belief it doesn’t help me with my #gains.

I check if my window is open, then sit down.

My laptop’s screen dimmed down while I was away and I don’t bother to change anything about it right now. I just dig my fork in the noodle box and eat. The noodles taste exactly like I hate them. They’ve sucked up all the bell pepper and chicken, _and_ shrimp.

This shit ain’t working, so I think of something to distract myself. I think of how productive I’ve been—or haven’t been—this break.

The days mom wasn’t home consisted of waking up at nine or ten, watching very questionable YouTube content, taking a piss, having breakfast, showering, grooming, grooming my downstairs, having breakfast, beating off… Beating off…a _lot._ That’s how my entire week was spent. Except for Tuesday, I went to Jean’s and played Fallout. And we had soccer practice on Wednesday and Friday, so my legs are a little sore now.

I think I’ll jerk off and go to bed. I’m so tired.

Let me put my two cents down: jerking off to mobile porn is fucking terrible and the experience in itself is disappointing and frustrating, but I’ve been getting off to mobile porn all week. Now, having this incredible opportunity to masturbate to the resolution of a 21.5” screen is… _thrilling_.

I ditch the fork with the noodles and push the box aside for a second. I have my headphones around my neck, so I put them on, leaving one ear free for safety reasons. The only thing I need is the cable, so as soon as I plug it in, the Chinese is back in my caring hands.

I open Safari again and go on Pornhub. While the home screen loads, I poke around my noodles and wonder what porn I’m feeling like today. None of the thumbnails seem too appealing, so I try to find solace on the category page and settle for a fun ride.

Now, categories, amusing! HD porn is okay. Usually overly artistic and fake-looking, they do the boho blurs and what not, but HD is always a plus—like, this comes from a guy who's been watching porn for a long, long time. HD porn is probably the best porn out there. All teens in the teen category look like the girls from my high school, so I avoid that.

Blowjobs… I love watching blowjobs. Cumshots are fantastic. I think I have some nasty thing for nut, but maybe I was influenced by Tyler, The Creator’s early career semen endeavor.

My eyes scan over the gay category.

I thoughtfully frown.

I’ve never watched gay porn with intent. The one time I do remember goes back to fifth grade. I was with a bunch of my friends, you know, just your everyday friend circle of eleven-year-olds sitting in a room and having an experimental group porn session with awkward little tents in their pants they’re trying to hide. Obviously, we all jerked off the very second we got home. It’s so… _normal_ to be eleven.

But shit, no, _what?_ Homosexuality? Being gay, _in my salad?_ Until now it’s never occurred to me that liking men was an option, but I don’t think I’d panic if I happened to fall in love with a dude.

I’m, uh—I’m straight as fuck. No, really. Even if I do like guys, on some subconscious plane, I do adore girls, and that leaves me with options. But I like to label myself as straight on most occasions.

You know what? Let’s exercise my sexual capability. I don’t have anything else to do while eating anyway.

I put my headphones on, and having thought about safety precautions in case mom, by some mysterious chance, walks in, push one side back off so I can hold my breath and listen to the nightly silence. Only thing I hear are a few cars on the road next to our house. Probably the big delivery trucks or something like that, those drive by often.

I click on the permalink and dig back in my noodles while the page loads. The ads change. I curiously lean in.

Shock takes over while I scroll down the first page, inspecting the name and thumbnail of every video. I have to admit: these are slightly more creative than the straight section. Straight people have their way with titties and exploiting women.

I check out the category page to find stuff I’ve never even heard of before. I’ve seen some of this in memes, Reiner is a walking TMI emoji, and we have two gay guys in the Discord chat, but… _yo_.

I jump to the most viewed page, then the daily recommendations. Everything seems pretty unappealing so far. So out of really idiotic curiosity, I click on the search bar and throw in _appealing_ keywords, such as “grinding”, “blowjob”, and for personal satisfaction, “soccer”.

What pops out is a list of the infamous “Coach & Player” trope videos, and I begin scrolling through them. Immediate regret settles. I’ve got a quite cool, laid-back soccer coach, his name’s Levi. You could say we’re _pals,_ but nowhere near what Pornhub is trying to sell me. Seeing so many videos with a quite relatable thematic makes me wonder whether it’s really that popular to fuck your seniors and shit.

I grin at a video called Handjob 006 (UNCUT). For whatever reason, that gets me real bad. Where are the other Handjobs? Does uncut stand for uncut film or uncut dick? Why is Handjob 006 so primitive and _minimalistic_ , in comparison to Young Blond Twink Fucks Enormous Bear; Drinks Cum From Own Ass?

My interest is heavily piqued by Handjob 006, because from what the thumbnail delivers, they’re wearing fucking _uniforms_. They don’t look all that different from mine, so fear jabs at my chest from the get-go. I hover the cursor above it. Tiny screen caps from the entire video promise a whole lot of sucking dick. Wow, and it seems artistic, it’s like those pretentious pre-paid porn videos on non-mediocre sites like Pornhub is.

Alright, fuck it! Handjob 006, you say? To hell with it. I want to see this. I’ll go with it. It’s _totally_ cool.

Sometimes I look back at my life and wonder why I do the things I do and am the way I am.

I love to think I make the best decisions, and this has been _the_ worst one so far. Well—okay, the second worst one so far, right next to drinking with my seniors when I was a freshman. That, within itself, is a grotesque mistake, but I made it worse by thinking I looked stunning in all pictures taken.

Guys watch lesbian porn, okay? It’s the same thing. Girls watch lesbian porn as well, for the sole reason that it’s great. Everyone seems to find lesbians hot, but guys having sex is gross because masculinity is more fragile than porcelain.

This is racist.

The video takes a while to load despite my Elon Musk design Internet, so I toggle to fullscreen and lean back in my chair. I don’t plan on getting off just _yet_ , but—for the preemptive setting—cross my legs in a meditative yoga pose and put the carton box in my lap. I fix my hoodie from wrinkling in the armpit area. Fuck, my stomach rolls feel a little sweaty. And the damn box of Chinese doesn’t stand straight, so I have to tear my eyes off the screen and try to place it right to I’d avoid getting noodles all over myself.

These are tactful preparations.

The video starts before I could look up, and a series of loud and unusually low moans drill into my ears. I jump and almost drop the noodles I’m trying to set. Reaching out to the keyboard and frantically tapping the button to turn the sound down, it’s unmistakable that my hands are trembling like crazy. And in the heat of the moment, my eyes become glued to the screen.

What flashes before my eyes are short clips of everything that's expected to be in the video. I endure all of them, somehow, my face pulled into a mask of severe disgust that mixes with admiration of some sort. The title appears. I straighten up. I’d aimed to jerk off, but now it’s more of a social experiment, and maybe I’ll end up filming a storytime video on YouTube to make some profit off of this.

The next scene is the one from the thumbnail slides. A pale guy stands in the center of the frame, hands in the pockets of his jeans. His shoulders are lifted upwards like he’s shrugging, but not _really_ —I don’t know what this pose is. It looks like he’s trying too hard to pretend he’s not in a gay porno.

His arms are neat and defined, and he’s got a really thick neck, but not like, you know, bull thick. Just _good_ thick. _Meaty_. He’s generally very proportionate and it’s obvious he’s spent some time at the gym; I can afford to say this because I once did, too. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, earlier mentioned jeans (not skinny, just good fit), and—chucks. I’ve never seen anything more humorous than some sorority-looking Gold’s Gym dude on Pornhub wearing chucks. I think I’ll watch this up until the uniforms appear, and then I’m out.

My eyes travel up to his face. It’s rare there are actually, within my taste, visually appealing men in porn, but this is the gay side of Pornhub, after all.

I squint. The video’s so HD I think I could count his lashes—if they were to be seen. A choppy, messy mop of hair falls straight in front of his eyes, leaving me with a straight nose, prominent cheekbones, very defined jawline and full lips.

I twirl the fork in my mouth. He’s actually quite good-looking from what I can see.

I look up at the ceiling and back down at his face. I pause the video and stare. 

My stomach is tingling. And with stomach I mean the area right above my dick, and it’s not a _good_ tingle, per se. What tingles is the feeling that I fucking _know_ this person and I know this person really, like, _really_ well. Maybe it’s just the generic black outfit that calls out to me or something, but it’s weird that I sense some resemblance. _Is_ it weird? I know my classmates found a girl from town on xnxx.com when we were in middle school, but maybe it’s just a New Jersey thing.

I resume the video and nervously poke at my noodles, which are already cold at this point, still having this blank voice of reason in the back of my head.

Someone from behind the camera speaks up while the guy in black rocks on his heels.

“Our co-company from Atlanta asked if we’d agree to shoot a private and paid scene with you, and I said, no, hell no, we won’t leave it private. We’re making it public, because this is one of our highest paying tropes. Thanks, Andrew, the crew is with you. We hope you’re back on track soon. Atlanta misses you.”

The standing guy makes a hashtag out of two peace signs. “Pray for Andrew.”

I slam the space bar and pause the video within a millisecond.

I fucking _recognize_ this person more and more, and I _think_ I’m going crazy, maybe, but even the gestures and general body language—is it—okay, it’s just me, I’m just spazzing right now. It’s probably the toll of nervousness that comes along with watching gay porn for the first time, and I’m not even holding my dick in my hand.

But the voice, too? Is this okay? Am _I_ okay?

I resume watching.

“Pray for Andrew,” the cameraman says. “Hey, he asked us if it’s possible for you to tell us about yourself. Like, not to _us_ , we all know you inside and out.” Agood portion of people laugh, and I get the joke. Because it’s porn. “But, uh, yeah. Atlanta’s interested. Make it good, we might air it to Chicago on the weekend.”

“Chicago?” A New Yorker, and yet…very New Jerseyan accent comes through. “Leave me out of Cocky Boys, please.”

“We’ll talk about it.”

The guy lands an outstanding fainting act. “Oh, I am so unprofessional. Sue me, but Cocky Boys’ _cockiest_ boys need new ideas to pick me up at bars. If I recall correctly, Red Velvet hung on my neck like a big, meaty clothes hanger. I don’t want that. Finitto.”

A lot of people behind the camera laugh. He also smiles and looks over at them instead of the cameraman. I don’t understand anything, but this is quite entertaining. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that in straight porn. Whoever a Cocky Boy is, he just literally and figuratively put him in a wheelchair.

“Okay, let’s stick to the schedule. Introduce yourself.”

He shrugs. “Alright. What counts as an effective introduction? “We are Cocky Boys dot com” flashing all over the screen? Drag me all you want, but advertising yourself needs a stop line—and I’m not talking about this here, I did it two weeks ago back at Plaidbacks. Plaidbacks, I love you, sorry, Andy, there’s nothing good left in this world. Link it down below.”

“Schedule,” the cameraman says.

“Subscribe to my channel,” the guy whispers.

“Schedule!” Someone from the back shouts. And whatever this charismatic guy’s name is, his expression jerks and he steps back into a more neutral position.

“What’s your name?” A different voice asks. “Name, age, interests?”

“My name’s nothing to you and Levi to my parents.” He winks. His right hand sinks into his hair, and he languidly pulls it back, somewhat tugging it behind one ear. Some strands fall, but his face is up to observation now.

I lean in so close my eyes literally touch the screen of my monitor and scroll back a few seconds.

“My name’s nothing to you and Levi to my parents.” He winks, again. Pulls his hair back.

I press my _forehead_ against the warm monitor and turn the volume all the way up, eyes wide open. It burns to be this close to the LCD display, but I have to see every pixel to make sure I’m not going insane.

“My name’s nothing to you and Levi to my parents.” The wink. The hair. “I’m twenty five years of age—thank you, I know I don’t look that old—a professional soccer player and soon-to-be soccer coach.”

I choke on a piece of chicken and cough. My knee hits the desk, and every piece of paper on it lands on the carpet, along with my keyboard.

Fuck me not only sideways but three-dimensionally and transcendentally.

It’s probably just a coincidence, Eren. Don’t you stress it. Don’t you _dare_ stress it.

“—and it's, as in, don’t steal my game. Been there since I turned five, still hanging. Pretty sure no one does it better than I do. I’m lovely and aspiring, maybe a little too into the trope we’re supposed to shoot, a New Jersey boy since two thousand—”

I know this man.

No way. No fucking way.

“I have this belief pornography is a whole artistic sphere within itself. And there’s so much—”

I can’t believe I’m seeing this.

“—because it's a form of art if you understand it from the aspect of being in front of the camera _and_ being a grinning cameraman—”

I pause the video again and stare at his face. It’s the same—it’s the same person, he’s just five years younger, it’s _him_ , he... It’s fucking...

Holy fuck. Holy fucking shit, fuck, goddamn.

I done fucked up good.

I’m so fucked. So, so very fucked.

I toggle full screen off and close the tab. I close Safari and shut down my computer. I don’t finish my noodles and throw them out instead. I ditch brushing teeth. Fuck that.

Without much modesty or grace, I fall in back in bed and close my eyes.

Levi. Levi. Levi.

I don’t know anyone else in New Jersey named Levi. He said it himself, so it’s not a porn star pseud, it’s his name. It’s. His. Name. It’s the name of _my_ soccer coach. _My soccer coach._

Of course, despite New Jersey not being quite the biggest state, there could still be multiple people named Levi. But what are the chances of finding a porno with someone who looks 20/20 like your soccer coach, shares the same name with him, too, and turns out to be— _you fucking guessed it_ —living in New Jersey?

Eren, honey, do you _still_ think it’s a mere coincidence?

“No,” I silently say to myself, in the suffocating darkness of my bedroom. I answered my own question, but I guess this works as the breaking point before a canyon of existential crisis.

I go on Pornhub to find what I need, master-debate, clean the mess and clean my history, not run up on a five year old video of my soccer coach getting a fucking handjob and whatever else he was having right in front of my fucking salad. And my fucking life aim is to become a professional soccer player. Does this foreshadow where I’ll end up in five years?

Just fuck my shit up.

Fuck my shit _up_.


	2. A-B-C-D-E-A-D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [scraggly noodle-hair JT voice] _it's gonna be May_
> 
> Find me as [@gazastrippin](https://gazastrippin.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!
> 
> Listen to the official [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/hentaivert/playlist/6yPFlwS4GGLAsIm4Rg8u0v?si=U7HuR0j0RX-MN13SLLlVaA) even your mom can turn up to!

When Daddy Yankee comes on in the club, I lose every bit of self-respect I’ve accumulated over the years.

I have this medical condition characterized by frequent and excessive use of the word “like”. It’s called like-arrhea, and I, like, _have_ it. And, look: I don’t know if laughter really is the best medicine, but I sure love that it doesn’t come with a $300 bill.

I’ve felt weird on Mondays for various reasons: active Sunday day drinking, severe muscle tension from soccer tournaments, existential crises (find me at 1 AM thinking about my exes in a Grouper-induced depressive episode!) or hikes with the group chat people—but never from a sleepless night where I throw myself around the bed wondering how to house the discovery of my soccer coach being a gay porn star.

“Alright, alright, Sasha is good, but _look_ at _that.”_

“Oh, I know.”

“I’m not talking about Eren, Jean. Six o’clock, the girl.”

Jean whips around at the speed of light. His hair bounces at the motion. It’s obvious he’s woken up late for our morning class, because the signature blowout is nowhere to be seen, and his hair, instead, forms what Connie and I call a Cowlick—a fat mop of bleach-damaged hair.

I feel extremely weird and am having an out-of-body experience.

I never thought porn would physically affect me _and_ my sleeping pattern, but there’s no other explanation to me being like this. By no other chance would I think about gay pornography in our school’s cafeteria on our free period, if it weren’t for Handjob 006 (UNCUT) and the starring actor. I didn’t even watch more than mere seconds of the video to have much say in the first place, but the intro was good proof I’ve seen things I shouldn’t have.

It’s like the outline of Levi’s dick is imprinted in my memory. I can’t remember basic math, but I remember exactly what he looks like when he comes.

My first thought last night—after the initial shock and slapping myself to check if I was having a nightmare—was whether I happen to be the first one in school to know of this. It doesn’t make sense if I am. The video is five years old with change, I checked, and I can’t make myself believe it hasn’t exploded, and Levi, consequentially, hasn’t resigned.

My second thought last night was: how am I ever going to look him in the eye from now on?

Mom texted asking why I ate in my room at night and whether I needed dark laundry to go first, because she’s not going to be home tonight and I’d only get my white load tomorrow. I just told her, you know, that _stuff_ happens, that sometimes you have to eat stale Chinese in your room at night, and that I’m wearing my Umbro sweatshirt for a continuous week, so, “no, you can wash dark clothes first, mom, I have The Depression and won’t wear my white Golf Wang t-shirt for some time now”.

Marco pushes closer to Jean and points at the crowd behind me as my beloved blond idiot is unable to locate some legendary piece of ass. Somehow I have never felt this uninterested in a girl as I am at the moment.

Jean and Marco have known each other for a longer time than Jean and I, but our friendship’s kind of stronger. Nobody can ever handle Marco, so Marco doesn’t have friends. He’s always _there_ , always _talking_ , but people seem to not give a fuck. He’s the filler episode of the Dragonball Z that is my life.

That’s really funny if you sometimes take the time to look at him and watch what he does during a boys night out at Owen’s Pub. He’s, like, Marco’s nothing. He just exists and copies everything you do. Take a look at his Odd Future donut socks. I paid fifteen dollars for my originals. He bought these off of Amazon, and that’s why I hate him.

They go on having locker room talk outside the locker room itself, and I carefully listen to know where to chime in and say I love anime titties.

Alright, fuck, I can’t bring myself to think about the more mundane things. I’m struggling. Like, do I change the subject before I say something about what I saw at night? Do _they_ know? Would it be okay for Levi if I told anyone? Actually, holy shit— _who_ would I tell this to?

I don’t want to talk. At all. It feels like I could slip up. I wouldn’t want Levi to get fired, but I’m not really known for giving a fuck, so maybe this has hit a serious magnitude. Come on, I’m the star of this school, the big, tough soccer team captain everyone loves, and I don’t know what an emotion is, so maybe I should stick to that prissy image.

In the college we attend, our school’s sports teams are more in numbers than there are people on the planet. Much to everyone’s surprise, I only do soccer and volleyball because of the strain and all other sports I want to try. Also my leg injury, but that’s old. Ball is life. I signed up for baseball when I was twelve and two months and got my face smashed in. I left baseball when I was twelve and two months and one day.

I’ve tried _American_ football since it’s in my blood to do an _American_ sport, because I am a _California_ born man. It’s also in my physique. Well, it’s mainly the physique. I’m the perfect build for football, but I really do not have a passion for it and left the same thing a week later.

Mom wanted me to do tennis because she said it’s safer, but I know it’s only because she thinks Roger Federer is cute. I googled tennis hate blogs and compiled a whole defense speech on how, _oh my god,_ I might get calf muscles like _this_. Or arms like _that_. I might have to play on a tennis court that looks like this. Or _that_. Playing tennis might make me _smile_ , mom, and that would be _horrible_. I’ll be forced to socialize with others and touch their germy hands. I might become really competitive, which would mean I might win a gold medal, and that’s no good; that’s just awful.

Eventually, she agreed I do whatever, so I chose soccer, once again, despite both my parents trying to convince me I need a change in my life, because the only change they’re getting is the one out of a vending machine.

Jean once said I have a thing for balls, which now seems exclusively unfunny.

I stretch in my seat and decide it’s time to ruin his mood. “Your roots are growing out,” I say, brushing my fingers against Jean’s shaved sides. “When are you asking my mom to bleach your hair again?”

He looks at me like I’d just laid an egg. Mentioning this embarrasses him. It’s only happened once, but he hates me for bringing it up. Everyone knows Jean likes my mom. I don’t know in which sense, but he likes her.

One night he came over for videogames, and my mom was doing aunt Dina’s hair. She has this preemptive assumption that Jean is severely gay, so she offered to lighten his roots with the leftover bleach—because, I guess, Jean having already bleached hair is a green light for “I like dick”. He got so fucking giddy. I should mention my mom isn’t very good at doing hair, so Jean ended up crying and angrily playing The Witcher while I ate hummus with baby carrots and explosively laughed every time he looked at me.

“It's a trend,” is his immediate reply, like he was waiting for me to point it out. He says this while looking over my shoulder, presumably at the girl. “It’s a trend, okay? I’m growing my hair out so I can do a fading transition and look sexy.”

“What kind of trend is that?”

“It’s called ombré, you caveman.”

I skeptically look at his “transition”. “So this is a transition.”

“Yes.”

“A _gradient.”_

Jean nervously runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah.” And then defensively adds: “Bitch.”

“I don’t wanna be _that_ guy, but your natural hair is literally a thousand shades darker. That’s not a fading transition, that’s your hair growing out for two ugly inches because time is relative and you have depression.”

Marco chokes on whatever he’s eating. I can’t watch him make a fool out of himself because of something not even moderately funny I’ve said, so I keep looking down at my pants.

Then Marco makes even more of a fool out of himself by adding: “At least you’re pale, so girls flock to you like seagulls.”

“That’s racist, you stupid beanbag,” I comment.

Jean eyeballs Marco and mouths a “yikes”, as if I actually got offended over something _Marco_ said. Marco makes these color remarks often. He’s the person who takes one Ancestry.com test that says he’s 2% African American, and immediately claims the title, being pasty as ever-loving shit.

Us, Turkish people, we stick out like a sore thumb and everyone knows it. Tea is our social lubricant. Most of my family members haven’t spoken to each other for decades because of something trivial. Bringing my first girlfriend home was the event of the century. Packed lunches at school were a nightmare. Mom used to put something foreign in there and the other kids always asked why was I eating one entire eggplant.

Oh my god, and once, being so Americanized, I forgot my family is…well, _like that._ If you pass someone a knife or scissors, you have to put it down for them to pick up, because if you give it to them hand-to-hand, there will be a huge conflict in your family, and everyone will stop talking to each other.

“Look, I’m moderately handsome,” Jean suddenly says, yanking me out of my Turkish daydream. “If I got into a model casting, it means I’m not ugly.”

“Model agencies e-mail _me,_ but go off, I guess.”

Jean theatrically looks out the window and pretends he didn’t hear what I said.

I rub my cheek again and languidly drag my hand down to scratch my neck. At least I’ve gotten rid of the intrusive pornography thoughts— _great,_ they’re back. Brain, get a room.

“Oh, Marco?” I pipe up. “Where’s the girl you were talking about?”

“Counter behind you.”

I peek over my shoulder.

Our school isn’t big, so it’s not hard to spy anyone who is new or different. All new kids come to the cafeteria. This is the main place squad and friendship magic happens, and it’s also my favorite place to lounge at, right after the field.

There’s only one dark-haired girl I notice, and I know for a fact it’s not Mina—Mina is kind of…flat.

I blink to make my eyes focus and watch what she’s doing. She stuffs change back in a wallet and tugs on a fitness bar at the same time, and it looks really cute. Then the wallet gets tucked in the back pocket of her jeans, she says something to the lady over the counter and gestures—and even her gestures look like something I could fall in love with.

The answer to my question of despair and girlfriend topic turns around, and I choke on my Capri Sun, because it’s no one else but Mikasa—the very same awkward encounter I had last week, embodied.

“Mikasa?” But I speak too goddamn early, because the Capri Sun I’m drinking spills from the straw, on my hoodie. “Oh, fuck, fantastic.”

She looks around, searching for whoever called her, and smiles having noticed me being a clown. I watch her walk over while wiping at my hoodie.

“Eren, right?” Mikasa says, sliding on the table. I see Marco’s Adam’s apple bob; he’s got the grand view.

“Oh, Mikasa, do we _know_ each other?” I do the whole reverie, bow and offer my hand to kiss hers. I’m not very good at keeping my composure, so I snort in her palm and we end up laughing.

“Stupid is as stupid does,” she says.

“I’m sorry I didn’t text,” I say. “Things.”

“It’s fine. I’m on a grand job hunt, I’d have gotten to you otherwise. Man! I was about to say we haven’t met since forever, but we met just a few days ago.”

“Awkwardly, yes.”

“I’m a mess when I have wine,” she shamefully confesses. “Anyway, what’s up? What’s going on? Isn’t this about the time you get home?”

“Soccer practice,” I explain, swaying back and forth in my seat. “Otherwise it’s just school, boredom, soccer season launching literally _right_ now. Also, busy boy is looking for a busy, busy job.”

“Oh, cool! Same.”

“Why are you here? Didn’t you—” I try to gesture. “—you know, town’s school, martial arts, something, something?”

“It’s a long and boring story, but: I’m a student now. Here. Congratulations.”

“Wow, shit, really? That’s great. Go on.” I rub my knee as I point over at both of my friends. “They don’t care, I’m sure.”

She looks at Marco, who happens to have the brain cells to look away from her ass and offer the signature polite smile, and her eyes practically _linger_ on Jean until she returns her attention. Oh no, she’s got the hots. I’m telling you, she’s got the _hots_.

If there’s anything I could go on about for hours, it’s the Jean Linger, but try not to get me started on the Jean Linger. Every girl here has a type, and it’s either me, or Jean. There is no other way. You either linger on me, or you linger on Jean, and it’s pretty much set after that.

“I guess I’m getting kicked out because broken family and college loans. I’m twenty-one,” she thoughtfully says while chewing on her muesli bar. “Big girl. Big girls love living on streets. I’m thinking about taking up a job, but I don’t know where to look, taken we just moved here for good.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I just need some minimal income so I can start looking into dorms or roommates, or some other Craigslist periphery.”

I bite my lip and focus my attention on my terribly interesting hands. “There’s a sports equipment store I’ve been looking at for some time now. My family knows the owner, Mike, so, like…”

“Yeah,” she cuts me off.

“Yeah,” I weakly repeat.

Mikasa chews, looking down.

I mean, yeah. I have no idea what it’s like to live on your own. I’ve never been in a situation like this. My parents agree with me on every decision and offer financial support whenever needed, but it’s really getting on my nerves that I’m a full-grown man still yanking his little muscular arms around his parents’ necks.

My mom wanted to become a fashion designer. It didn’t work out. She became an interior designer instead, which is why our house looks torn out of a magazine. Right now she’s mostly roaming around New Jersey from one project to another. Paints at home and sells the paintings, too.

My dad is a dentist. He…does dentist things.

“Hey, so, Eren, if you don’t mind…” Marco joins in, sliding on the table with his hand propping his cheek. “Who is she?”

Jean and I look at each other and smile. We once found a picture of a dog in tights and the caption of it said “who is she”. Jean kept repeating that the whole day.

Speaking of which, Jean’s expression mingles with very interested and awfully scared. Matchmaker Eren? Aye, girl!

“Well, gentlemen…” I slide my arm around her waist and pull her close, and, _oh my god, she smells like strawberries._ “This is my wife, Mikasa.”

Marco covers his mouth with his palm like they do in classic film, and Jean blinks in surprise; both gestures left very underappreciated, because Mikasa doesn’t look at them.

I continue. “Mikasa, that’s Marco. They call him Mac DeMarco sometimes. I don’t. I don’t talk to him. Don’t talk to him either, unless there’s been a plague that wiped out mankind and he’s the last person to exist. Then, yeah, you can talk.”

Marco smiles through the pain. “Sounds about right, Eren.”

“Hi,” Mikasa greets him.

“And then, alas, the grand finale. The pretty one is Jean. Jean Kirschtein. You’ll never spell it right. I love him. He wears good clothes and has a lot of money. I love him.”

“You said that already.”

“Yeah, but I do love him. He is, like, a very good person if you ignore the fact that I beat him in every videogame I own.”

“His pubes are blond,” Marco blurts.

I snort against Mikasa’s back.

“That’s not true at all,” Jean comments.

“Yeah, but why would I lie about something like that?”

“Oh my god,” I say. “Marco has a point for the first time in his life. Mikasa, it’s true.”

I could swear I saw Mikasa’s stomach jerk to suppress laughter.

“I can’t believe you’ve done this,” Jean says in a very lousy British accent.

There’s this cartoon silence that could potentially have crickets chirping in the background. Marco finishes drinking his carton milk with a loud slurp, and we all look at him.

“What?” He tilts back in defense. “Good milk.”

“I think I’m Marco-intolerant,” I whisper. “So, would you hang out with my idiot friends, honeycakes?”

She shrugs. “Brown haired Jersey boys are my thing now, I guess.”

We sit in silence, waiting for her to address Jean and his _blond_ hair. But she just fucking finishes her wholegrain bar, folds the paper in four, tosses it on our table, and says: “Okay. I’ll go catch up with Pixis, I need to give him the keys to the basement. A lot of my shit is stored there for the time being. He’s such a nice old dude.”

There is murderous energy coming from Jean’s approximate direction.

Mikasa hugs me with one arm. “See you later, Eren.”

She pats at Marco’s knee.

She walks off.

It’s silent until Jean comes back to life and starts incoherently screaming about how women don’t seem to recognize him as a living entity.

He got friendzoned before he even got _into_ the friendzone. He got…strangerzoned.

Mikasa literally ignored his existence.

* * *

“Practice is rescheduled,” Jean informs me in a bored manner.

My stomach tingles. “Any details?”

“It was moved from Friday to today. The one on Wednesday is still there, but Friday’s off,” Jean says and nudges my shoulder to change my walking direction. We take course to the sports hall and my whole being begins to refuse going there.

“That…sucks.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Why? Practice is literally after school, so you get more out of the weekend.”

“No, I mean…” I begin explaining as I look over my shoulder, back at the empty hallway. “I don’t really have anything to do this weekend. Oh, my mom said Levi e-mailed her saying I’ve gained weight. I’ve been eating fried rice exclusively for the past, I don’t know, two months.”

“Great.”

“By the way, he uses Yahoo to e-mail people.”

“Wow.”

I can tell how much meeting Mikasa has torn him apart.

“Listen, man. We could hang out with Mikasa,” I carefully suggest. “Like, you heard her story. It wouldn’t hurt if we went out with her and had a few drinks, I think. Maybe that kind of stuff would work as the infamous bonding people in indie movies do.”

“Stop pretending like there’s anything between us that can be done.”

“Hey, there’s always a chance.”

“Yeah, especially when the utmost perfect being doesn’t even look at me. She seems to like you,” Jean says. “So I’m not sure if it’s even worth a shot. This precedes our golden rule: once you go Eren, you can never go Jean.”

“You know…” I swing my bag a little higher. “We could go to your place. Play Mortal Kombat or Smash. She does kickboxing.”

“What else does she do?”

I can’t ignore the curiosity in his voice, but we’ve arrived at the sports hall, and that seems to drag all of my attention away. The peril I dreaded earlier comes straight back, and I can physically feel beads of sweat form on my nose.

“Let’s talk about this after practice,” I say.

“If coach doesn’t keep you late, sure.”

Oh, yeah. I forgot this was a thing. Now that I forcefully remember it, I feel even worse.

I push the left side of the main door open and take a deep whiff of the air inside. God, it always smells great. It smells like paint, sweat, sweaty socks, lavender and really bad cologne. It’s the signature smell of soccer practice and occasional middle school kids having P.E. here. I love it.

“God, it smells,” Jean winces. “I wonder why practice was moved to today. There’s practically nothing scheduled on Thursday and Friday, we just have gap days now. I mean, fuck it, good for us, but Regionals are coming up.”

“Maybe there's a tournament.”

“Maybe.”

“There haven’t been any posters, though,” I say and throw my bag on the bench. “Or, at least I haven’t seen any. We should’ve asked Marco. Maybe there’s a basketball thing in town.”

Jean shakes his head. “Nah. He wouldn’t shut up about it all week if there was.”

“Point taken. Weird.”

“Really.”

I don’t see Levi anywhere, but I do spot my Thomas and a few others forming a little group on the opposite side of the hall. What leads to them is a little trail of dots that I assume is someone’s nosebleed. Connie is wailing, for some reason, but that’s nothing new.

“Thomas?” I shout.

His head whips up. “Yeah?”

“What's up with the…” I point at the presumed blood. “…whatever that is?”

Connie says something loud and incoherent, and I turn to Jean.

“The hell is he saying after screaming like a hysterical devil bitch?” I ask.

Jean smiles, but shrugs.

“We had a dodgeball warmup,” Thomas yells over Connie’s aggressive gesturing. “Levi hit Connie in the face. I think it was an accident.”

This is the best introduction to Levi, as a whole, that you could ever get. So, eat up—this is Levi Ackerman to you, my infamous soccer coach who exploded a few years ago. He was fresh in the coaching business and somehow led the previous team to a fulfilling gold medal in the Brazil Cup games, which only happen once every four years. Ever since then, people have regarded him with respect due to his young age and surprising talent.

I’m quite fond of his coaching technique. I’ve been on his team for three years now, and it’s been a smooth sail up until yesterday night.

“I think it’s broken,” Connie finally says something plausible. Someone recommends he tilts his head back. You know, Connie, yeah, you do that.

Soccer practice is usually hell if Levi’s in a bad mood. He takes it out on us by making us do drills like some U12 children. On the bright side, we’re not having practice outside yet because it’s cold as ass and there are still chunks of snow here and there.

Levi coached floorball when people still played it. Time fled and it kind of got out of trend, Levi ran short on money and left the school for a hiatus of some sort. I mean, that’s what we all assumed—that he got broke. This started happening every spring, just around April or so. Then he came back. His comebacks meant new uniforms, sports equipment, and his own clothes seemed new and, dare I say, _tailored_. Sometimes he got a haircut, too. It’s weird that I notice this, but my excuse is that he’s my sports idol—and I have to admit I bought that Lacoste polo shirt because he had it. And, yeah, maybe I ate nothing but nuts and water after spending that kind of money on a polo shirt. Don’t hate me ‘cause you ain’t me.

Jean always guessed Levi was on good terms with a few other professional players and that that’s what he’s been doing while away ( _doing,_ now that I think of it, in the most figurative way), but the only good terms of his that I knew of were with the principal, Dot Pixis, the sports equipment store’s owner, my Almost Uncle Mike Zacharius, and my high school history teacher, Erwin Smith. Levi is a very brief, collected and to-himself person, so it baffles me how he and Erwin can exist in the same timeline.

Erwin’s his best friend, if old people have besties, and I doubt he wrings money out of his ass being a workaholic professor just to sustain his friend’s needs. But then again, Levi’s really invested in the large world of porn industry, so I’m just guessing it all starts there, and maybe he fucks Erwin for weekly allowance, or something. Sugar daddies is common knowledge and high school can make you desperate enough to look that up.

Don’t ask.

Jean leaves to the lockers and I stiffly follow like a bad rendition of GTA: Liberty City.

The room is huge and includes the showers. One door connects the locker room to the toilet, and the toilet goes out to the hall. The walls are in a bright green, luminous tone. It’s like Shrek took the fattest shit in here. Girls don’t have a separate locker room as practice never happens together. The only girl to have ever participated along with boys at some point was Ymir, and it’s reasonable, because the first time I saw her I thought she’s a boy.

I couldn’t get over myself for weeks after finding out she’s gay. I had a huge crush on her the first month I was here, because she was the only other Turkish person in school that I knew of. She knows my mom. They’ve worked on a few art projects together. We’re on pretty good terms, so her family sometimes comes over to our place for dinner.

Ymir and I used to be friends. In junior year, I guess. Now we only group-skate once in a while, listen to Odd Future, and don’t directly interact.

It’s not really common in our town—being gay, I mean. This is kind of the heterosexual chunk of New Jersey, where I live. I’ve had my doubts about Jean’s sexuality, but Jean is probably the straightest of us all. Connie has been dating Sasha for four years now, Thomas, Mylius and Franz are as straight as the very equator, Marco’s straight, I’m straight, and the rest of the seniors are _kind of_ straight (except for Ymir and Reiner).

And then there’s Levi.

I don’t want to think about this.

Maybe there are some other scattered gay people around my parts of Jersey, but there’s not a visible amount. There is no concentrated gay energy. How _ever,_ people are not pronounced Christians here, so you’d think that sheds the homophobia. Jean has grown very keen to say every miniscule thing going against his will is homophobic. The Domino’s delivery guy who was twenty minutes late because his car broke down? Homophobic.

People here…people here walk around in flip-flops that sound like white people having sex and sunbathe a lot. That is all there is to us.

All boys back in the hall wore red Nike t-shirts. Let me paint a little color scheme for you, now, to explain how our soccer practice works, because Levi has had too much of Bob Ross.

Navy blue Nike shirts mean: “Wow, drills! I love being in middle school. It’s most likely leg day.”

Green Nike shirts mean: “Actually, nothing. We got these because it’s sponsorship. We wear them if everyone coincidentally forgets to do weekend laundry.”

White Adidas shirts mean: “You can see my nipples through this. It doesn’t provide any other functionality. This was 2015 sponsorship. We’re Nike now.”

Red Nike shirts mean: “Please, no. I will actually fall to my knees and bury my face in the shirt, and cry a whole Rorschach into it.”

Red Nike shirts mean physicals. And to someone who spent his last two weeks eating very nutritionally poor food, physicals are the homicide of serotonin. And, father, I _crave_ serotonin.

“It’s core day,” I say and press two fingers to each temple. “Jean? Why did natural selection choose to keep me?”

“Now _that_ sounds like the joyful Eren I know,” comes his reply. “Tight Nike’s, here I come.”

“Tight Nike’s, here comes daddy Eren.”

“Okay, you _know what?”_

I wheeze and pull off my shirt. Jean pinches my miniature left-side love handle and yodels like the fucking Walmart kid.

“It’s the kebab coupons,” I say. “Don’t look at me.”

Jean ugly laughs. “I just can’t stop thinking about how you used to be rail thin. You always drank fucking Gatorade and ran around like that Vine kid on crack. The one who gets a basketball fucking _projected_ into his head and all he does is take a power stance and scream. That was you when we met.”

“Did I really drink Gatorade?”

“You were probably baptized in it.”

I can’t stop laughing after Jean lands this joke, so we take the time in silence to get undressed. I kick off my shoes and undo my pants while Jean is already forcing himself into the clingy Nike shirt and stumbling to the shower mirrors.

Jean has a weird need to do his hair before and after every practice. It’s stupid, but reasonable. Whenever he doesn’t work on it, the Cowlick surfaces.

I sit down on the bench to pull on my trainers. “It’s _practice_ , dude. You do this every time, as if with enough superstition and training your body could unlearn how to sweat.”

He looks at me through the mirror. “Fuck you,” he says, and keeps teasing his hair.

“Your hair got straight from all the bleach,” I point out. “Like white people and crusades.”

“You need to stop with the white people.” Jean tries to be serious, but I know he loves how upset I am with skin color.

I got dumped over skin color, I got bullied over skin color, and I got detention (once!) over skin color. Not _my_ skin color, but I want to be dramatic. It’s not really my fault that the girl three seats across claimed no one is white because the word Caucasian has “Asian” in it—I mean, it’s not _my_ fault that I laughed like an exploding grenade and dropped the peanut M &M’s I was trying to snack on.

I think the people in high school who say things like these get prematurely pregnant, thank Jesus on their Facebook timeline and then end up in jail for robbing a bank in Michigan.

“Look,” I say, “you’ll get sweaty anyway. It’s been three years. I’ve been telling you to stop for three whole years.”

“You’ve been in college for _three whole years,_ Eren, and I’ve been telling you to stop this whole time.”

“You didn’t have to say it like that.”

“You don’t look like you even _own_ a comb, look at yourself.”

I do, hovering above his shoulder, and wink at myself. Bomb dot com. My curly hair sticks out at every given opportunity.

Jean observes my infatuation with myself and rolls his eyes. I notice the slightest crack of a smile.

“Idiot,” he says.

“I love you,” I say in return and give his shoulder a pat. “Let’s go, I’m ready to get murdered. Watch coach literally give me a thousand reps. I’m not kidding, he will, he hates me.”

“I really don’t want to do anything right now.” Jean hesitates. “I mean, I think I should’ve left when Mikasa came. I made the whole thing real fucking awkward.”

“Oh my god, it’s still her? Jean, look: who gives a fuck about love right now? We out here getting absolutely no pussy. We were born undeserving.”

“Oh my _god,”_ Jean almost coughs out.

“The season’s coming up. Regionals are coming up. That, Berlin, moving to New York. Tinder is going to work your phone up a whole lot more in NYC, so stop. The quicker the last bits of snow melt, the better. Don’t think about…some bullshit, man. We have stuff to do.”

“But it’s _goth_ pussy,” he whispers.

“Stop. You know coach is going to kill us if we don’t improve in physicals.” My tone is convincing, because Jean frowns. “Come on, Jean, she’s just _embarrassed_. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s the “oh, I like this guy, let me completely ghost him until he is driven away and then slide in his Instagram DMs saying how nice his feed is”.”

“I’d rather endure physicals than listen to you trying to convince me everything is good.”

“Great! So it worked. Let’s go.”

He emits the sound of a deceasing dinosaur.

We go back to the main hall. Turning around the corner that leads us out to the open space, I nearly trip from what I see: it’s Levi. But I don’t trip from the shattering memories yesterday. I’m just really disappointed that no one talks about the fact that Levi is wearing a short-sleeved shirt over a long-sleeved shirt. This is the epitome of high fashion.

Sometimes he wears cargo pants. I once asked him what he does with that amount of pockets, and Levi just said: “It’s like pockets, but more.” Ever since he said this, it’s turned into a running joke. It’s like pockets, but _more._

I haven’t seen Levi since last night’s video. He stands turned sideways, holding Connie’s head back in the position he’d held it himself when we arrived. It looks like Levi is trying to calm him down. They talk and Levi presses a bag of ice against Connie’s nose, all in his might, glory and short-sleeve over long-sleeve.

He finally looks over, as indifferent but approachable as ever.

A trail of heat drips down my spine. I distinctively place my hands over my crotch and stand like a Sim waiting for instructions.

“Number ten, eleven, the line,” he calls us by our player numbers, calmly, as usual, as if he’d be completely alright that there’s his porn on the Internet.

My legs feel heavy. I don’t want to go behind the line a whole lot. I don’t want a single practice session anymore, and I feel like I hate soccer from now on.

His voice is so much different than it was in the video, but it’s still so very _Levi_ I have no other choice but to accept my twisted fate and truly come to terms that I’m being coached by a porn star.

Frankly, the curiosity is killing me. I want to find out more about the whole ordeal. I’m just not the person to leave this hanging. I can’t just _live_ with knowledge like that—like it’s nothing.

How do you just…how does life come down to that? How do you wake up and think: yes, today I will go record myself ramming someone in the asshole and put it out for the entire universe to see?

I guess it’s like pockets. It’s like pockets, but more.

Fuck. This is going to be harder than I thought.

* * *

“Thirty more, number eleven! Twenty for number ten, ten for number three! The others take a break and fill the last set, go, go, _go!_ Jaeger, move, fucking _move!_ Ten more! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six!”

Translation: thirty for me, twenty for Jean, ten for Thomas.

Crunches.

I hate crunches.

I fall back with five left and miserably grasp at the air above me. My shirt is drenched in sweat, clings to my core and suffocates, being so synthetic. Red Nike shirts? We hate them.

Physicals kill us on the inside and outside, and sometimes Levi says sweat is just our souls crying. I don’t ever comment on that. It feels accurate.

I tap out against my thigh. “I can’t, that’s it, I’m done for today.”

I know I shouldn’t have said that, taken I’m the captain of the team, but we all respect each others’ boundaries here. I’m like a senior soccer player, so Levi somewhat respects me as well—but buddy, it’s spring. And in spring, Levi shits on everything that breathes, straight up.

“You’re what?” Rings from across the hall. “Jean, keep it up, good pace, good pace. Straighten your back. Five more reps, then stretch. Eren, what did you say?”

“I _said,”_ I deliberately pronounce the “said”, “that I need more of a leg day today, like... Call an ambulance, I’m dying.”

Someone on my left laughs and Levi barks at him to shut up.

“You feel like repeating that?” His irritation is _silky_. With the corner of my eye I watch him walk over. “Tell everyone how exhausted you are, I’m sure they’d love to hear that.”

Ladies and gentleladies, this is what we call Levi’s Percussive Maintenance. With years, we’ve learned not to take things he says to heart, but it was a lengthy and tough process. On our junior year, the first weeks of practice ended up with everyone silently sobbing in the locker rooms. Levi has this skill of making you feel like shit by not really…doing anything. He lands completely reasonable insults and pinches at your problem zones. I get that getting pinched in the stomach because of weekly Wendy’s milkshake roadtrips isn’t pretty, but you either endure the embarrassment, or you stop going to Wendy’s.

A lot of people left soccer because of this and then told their parents Levi has sociopathic tendencies and that he “emanates murderous aura”, “drives a family car to conceal the fact that he is unlovable and mean”, and so on. Except Levi just wants you to do five more crunches.

“I can’t,” I patiently repeat.

The best attitude to have during Percussive Maintenance is to stand for yourself, but it can get difficult when Levi stares you down like a pile of a Yorkshire Terrier’s doo-doo at the park.

“Again,” he calmly says and kneels down in front of me. I look away the moment my eyes meet his. “Say it again, come on.”

I thought it would be laughably easy to deflect him coming on to me, but the video from last night decides this is a _great_ time to resurface in my head.

I’m glad my face is already red from the workout. The building pressure in my chest bubbles (and his gloomy staring is _not_ helping), and finally I break, sitting up—realizing he is a lot closer than I thought.

“Stop, holy fuck!” I rapidly wipe at my sweaty face. “You make me do five sets instead of three. I can’t do five. I’m out of shape. I can’t do it. Yes, I’m weak, miserable, five pounds over my goal weight. Yes, I had a lot of kebab over spring break. Happy? Happy. Cool.”

His hands pin down my feet so it’s practically useless to try and stand. I move to sit in a more comfortable position, and then he stares me down. I lose, of course, because Handjob 006 (UNCUT) exists, and close my eyes.

I can’t even fucking look at him now, what’s next?

“I feel like shit,” I quite honestly say.

“Me too,” Levi says. It surprises me he has a speck of emotion. “Keep your breath steady for half a minute, do twenty more. Then take a break and we’ll do another set. Drink some water. You can go after that.”

For a porn star, he sure is a calm guy. Seeing a real porn star in flesh isn’t anything I really ever expected. I guess I let one thing slip: they’re just people off set.

My stomach does flips from such exertion. Following his instructions, I rest for thirty seconds and attempt to keep a regular pace for the leftover twenty crunches. Once done, I feel my neck to check if I still have a pulse. My skin is burning hot. The sweat leaves my palm wet and warm, and I wipe it off in my pants.

With the corner of my eye, I see Levi turn away. He thinks it’s gross we sweat a lot, but everybody sweats—Prince Levi included.

Jean falls back after his twenty reps, breathing with barely any sign of exhaustion (because core is his thing), and Thomas is doing extra crunches somewhere in the background to show off.

“Just do it, Eren,” Levi patiently says.

“Oh my god, that’s what Shia LaBeouf said.”

“Shut up. Lie down,” Levi dictates and presses on my feet. I feel his knuckles dig into the bridges through my sneakers. I _feel_ him but don’t want to seem like I care, because it was never like this before last night. Before last night, he could’ve slapped my ass and I’d think nothing of it.

Because of my history in soccer, I’m always the one who gets an extra set, an extra lap, extra pounds while lifting and very little attention otherwise. I’m like a dummy voodoo doll in practice. Levi works me off like that’s his hobby. Wow, maybe it is. I just find the whole thing unfair—while _completely_ reasonable, unfair still.

“Are you done daydreaming?” He puts more pressure on my feet. “Lie down, Eren.”

“I’m gonna stretch.”

“Okay, stretch.”

Levi stands up. I roll on my stomach and hook my hands around my ankles. It’s blissful and simultaneously painful to pull at my entire core, but it helps to get the lactic acid running. This will hurt, and it’s only Monday.

I want to cry and eat some fat, freaky Chipotle menu extra, and down it with peach iced tea, and then watch stupid romcoms on Netflix as I text all my exes and look at people having good lives on Instagram. Every cell of my body tempts me to do it after practice, but I really have to fix my eating habits.

Oh my god. It kind of hits me that Levi is waiting on me as I lavishly stretch on the gym mat like some belly dancer with my ass out in the open, and that makes me whip back around to face him.

He’s standing there, drinking water from a bottle that has the stupid suckle tip, like some big baby. From his eyebrow raise I take that it translates to “you done?”.

“I wonder if any of my college scholarship is going to your account as a bonus for being my personal trainer who personally only trains me to cry at night,” I say, locking my shoulders in and out.

Levi boyishly snorts. “No, tax returns don’t make my mouth frothy or anything, and I don’t get paid more for this.”

“You satan. You torture people for free and face no consequence.”

“I have to get off somehow. It’s tough work running hell and doing Hades’ paperwork. Lie down.”

I follow the order and fall back. My hands go behind my head almost by reflex, and I take a deep breath. My abdomen screams at me with the rage of a thousand suns.

“I literally hate this day,” I say. “I hate my life.”

“Take a deep breath.”

“I just did.”

“Good. Start.”

But I don’t. “For someone who’s known me for years, it should go without saying I hate this more than anything.”

If it’s core day on a Monday, I’m never even in the mood to beat off.

Levi remains stern. “Stop crying. On three. One, two—”

I do five quick sit-ups.

“Five more,” he says at my fourth.

I squeeze my eyes shut and follow the order.

“Ten more!”

“How the fuck—“ I breathe harshly through my nose over the pain of several more sit-ups, “—am I going to _skate_ home?”

“You’ll take the bus,” Levi says. “Keep going.” He slaps at my calf. _“Keep going.”_

After the last miserable pull, I fall back on the gym mat and consider expressing my anger in a victory scream at the ceiling, but nobody wants me screaming, so I lie still. Heat surges through my muscles. The gym mat is pleasantly cool. I try to breathe through my nose, but my blood cells scream for oxygen—I have to cover my face with my wrists because my gasping sounds loud.

The pressure on my feet disappears at last. I roll around for a while, a few minutes at least. Then I lean up on my elbows, only to realize there’s nobody in the sports hall anymore.

I swallow whatever is in my mouth. If this whole thing wasn’t as coincidentally odd as it is, I’d just do my last set and go home. Boy, does this sound like a horrible porn intro—soccer team captain stays in late after practice to please his coach.

Oh my _god._

“Good job.” Levi’s voice comes muffled from his office next to the lockers. “You’ve improved a little.”

“A _little?”_ I ask. “With my training regimen, I have the endurance and power of an ethereal being. I only have severe love for unhealthy food because, if given the opportunity to control my cravings and fight god one-on-one, I would obliterate him.”

Levi laughs from the office. “That was funny.”

“Thank you.”

“You have the same program as everybody else.” He comes out of the room, holding my water bottle—refilled. “Yours is just a little more efficient for your form.”

He likes using the word "little" in all the wrong fucking places.

“What does that mean and how do you just decide on these things?”

“You’re heavyweight, have fluctuating body mass and take a longer time to wear off. Our nutritionist said it’s fine, so it’s fine.”

“Okay, so it’s fine I cry at night because our nutritionist who only does couple yoga before bed said so. Like, I know I’ve been playing soccer for a longer time and everything, but—“ I sit up fully and catch the water bottle he throws at me—probably with the intention to kill. “Thanks.”

Levi walks back to the gym mat I’m on, hands in the pockets of his black sweats. “No problem. Drink up, rest, do the last set and you’re good to go.”

“Why isn’t, like, Jean working his ass off? He’s a good player. I’m tired. I’m an old man now, let me rest.”

“You’re a better player than Jean. You can sit there and focus on your solitary strengths while I work on your weaknesses. That’s my job.”

I feel #shook. He really just said that! “I repeat: I’m an old man now.”

“Oh, right. Wasn’t it your birthday some weeks ago?”

I’m taken back by the fact that he knows at least the approximate date. “Yeah, a week ago, how’d you know?”

“Because your mother posted something on your Facebook wall that was as equally endearing as it was hilarious.”

I cover my face with my hand. “Ugh.”

“Happy belated birthday,” Levi says. “Okay, you know what? Since I now feel bad for the whole birthday thing, don’t do that last set. I’ll leave that for summer.”

“I literally, like, can’t _wait_ for my summer body,” I imitate a valley girl accent. “Like, oh my god, I’m _so_ gonna do a juice cleanse.”

He rolls his eyes and grins like he’d even vaguely understand the suffering I’m in.

“I’m not kidding about getting fat,” I add, and then chug some water.

“Want more reps?” Levi’s voice is challenging. And I almost nod, but then he says: “Alright, forget it. I don’t have that much time for you right now. I’m leaving in a few.”

“Oh, yeah.” I seal the lid of the bottle and let it roll to the side. It hits Levi’s foot. “About practice on the weekend. Why are both nights moved?”

“Because of a tournament,” Levi says, immediately becoming more stiff with vocabulary.

“What kind?”

“Volleyball.”

I frown. “It’s not even season yet. Indoors volley? You coach volley? Or are you in a team?”

“This is none of your concern right now.”

“Will you look less depressed if I actually do the last set?”

“People go to jail for bribing,” Levi says. “But go ahead.”

“You’re coaching a prodigy, it’s good enough of a reason. Hashtag just girly things—when he cares so much he offers to work out for your smile.” My words get stuck in my throat when I begin the last set. “I think I’m privileged enough to know why soccer practice is moved.”

Nine down, twenty-one to go. The heated sensation returns to my muscles, and the sweat that cooled while I drank the water is broken by a new wave of heat.

Eighteen to go.

Levi’s smile feels a little mocking. “Don’t think you’re much more privileged now that I’ve told you you’re the spine of our team.”

“The hell for are you so nice to me, then?” I ask. I can feel sweat drip down my temple. “And I meant it quite rhetorically, you mean man.”

“I talked about you in high school with Erwin. As it turns out, you haven’t changed a bit since back then, and he’s known you for a while now.”

Oh, they talk about me? Great. Just great. “So?”

“So?” He hits back.

Fuck my set, this is a great opportunity. I sit up. He doesn’t complain about the unfinished set. “What do you mean by that? Are you just going to, I don’t know, befriend me? We out here being best friends now? Were you a horrible kid in high school and feel like you can relate?”

Levi frowns while very confusedly smiling. “What?”

Finally I realize it’s just my subconscious speaking and he may not be interested in being friends with me at all. I mean, we _are_ almost like friends, but with a lot of formality and paperwork, different levels of hierarchy and an age gap of nine years.

Being aware of that ignites sudden embarrassment and my self-defense mechanism works wonders. “I just asked.”

“You do feel more relatable than others, but I’m not too interested in pursuing a friendship. I don’t want to invest time and energy in new people. You’ll understand when you’re my age.”

“Not _too_ interested,” I quote. “Don’t talk like you’re sixty. Other people your age travel around the world, fuck presidents and run drug businesses.”

“And other people my age work nine-to-five, have kids and pay their bills.”

“You have kids?”

He side-eyes me. “Stop.”

“Oh my god, are you a _dad?_ Do you have a family?” I let the questions roll. “Are you married? A wife? Can we meet your wife?”

That last question bites me in the ass. _He’s gay, you dumb fuck,_ I tell myself.

Levi kind of circles around the row of gym mats and starts stacking them. “Eren, the one thing you should know is that our relationship is professional and it stays that way. That means you don’t get to hear about the wife and kids I don’t have.”

“I take that you just answered my questions, so we are on the yellow brick road to friendship.”

He quits the stacking and looks over. “Maybe we’d have more to talk about once you get out of college.”

He said this in a way it could imply a lot of things. It could imply I actually do sport a chance of being friends with Levi, but the idea of him being in a superior position puts him off. It could imply I just have to grow up, because all I talk about right now is how good my mom’s salsa dip has gotten.

Or maybe, he’s hitting on me.

Oh my god. I think my pupils just visibly dilated. _Oh my god._

“Do you think I’ll just graduate and live my entire life being a soccer coach so we can go to Owen’s Pub and talk about what kind of drills our teams did on Wednesday night?”

“Since when do you think that’s what coaching is?” He asks, somewhat irritated. He got so worked up because he knows my dream is to play professionally until I retire, and start coaching after retirement. I value his job. I just want the #drama so Levi opens up.

“I’ve always thought what you do now is boring and underpaid. Training a big league was your peak, and now you’ve just…” My hands do circling motions. “Settled.”

Levi slowly walks back over with an expression honed for premium pornography and murder. “This is what I meant when I said you have to get out of college for us to talk about things that aren’t completely trivial. You still don’t understand how the world works. You don’t judge people for what they do for a living.”

I haven’t heard him speak in a tone this serious.

“Don’t you ever get _sad_ thinking about it?”

“I do what I like doing most. Don’t think I don’t have any ambition; your ambition just differs from mine.”

I can feel my head shake on it’s own. “How much do you get paid for this?”

“Well, this isn’t the most paid job I’ve had.”

“Porn sure pays better, doesn’t it?” I suddenly ask.

The change of our facial expressions is immediate. Levi goes sheet pale. For me, it takes a few seconds to realize what I said—because it has become so _normal_ in my head.

My jaw drops. With a silent “sorry”, I shuffle to my feet and walk backwards before sprinting off to the lockers.

* * *

The last time I saw Levi so shocked was in Berlin, three years ago.

I broke my left leg on a soccer match. We lost. It was three years ago and I still remember how the bone poked through my skin. My quick, shallow breaths, Levi’s cold hand on my forehead. I think about this memory a lot. Levi worries about me often.

I hadn’t thought of a retreat plan. Fucking disappearing was the only thing I could imagine doing. I think I’ve subconsciously started erasing this memory, because I remember little detail and it’s only been two hours. I definitely recall locking myself away in the furthest shower cabin and waiting for my anticlimactic death as Levi arrives and destroys me with his aligned chakras.

I sat on the wet shower tiles for at least thirty minutes. Nobody came. There wasn’t even as much as footsteps or knocking near the lockers, there was literally nothing.

I definitely thought about Levi zoning out in his car. About all the identity crises he’s having now, the regret, the… I don’t even know.

I ran home in my sweaty uniform, showered as soon as I stepped in my room and called Jean over so he’d bring me food and we could play Smash together. Now he’s sitting on my bed and shouting at the TV screen.

There is no way on earth I can tell him about this. I’m physically unable to do it. It _won’t_ come out. Jean could misunderstand. Levi could get fired. I could lose friends. We could not get to the Regional games, or to Berlin. So, this could fuck everything up.

But when I finally muster up the courage to ask whether Jean has ever wondered what Levi does in spring while away, I get interrupted by a silent knock on the door. We both turn to see mom stretch out a hand holding a plate of brownies. I recoil from the desk since my chair has wheels, and take the plate from her. Jean screams a "thank you" and returns his attention to the game.

As I eat the chewy brownies, I try to recover from this sickening feeling of heat up in my throat.

I’ve never believed in perfect timing.

I’ve never believed in coincidence, not until last night. And I’ve been thinking, maybe all the coincidences happening lately are just leading me on to something.

While Jean occupies himself with Smash, I sink in thoughts about cruising with my dad in his Saab Convertible, listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers after seeing them in California on a family visit while mom was in Houston. That was before he moved out. I’d never felt more careless than back then, screaming to Scar Tissue as I hung myself out the window without a shirt on. My chest had peeling leftovers of a temporary RHCP tattoo I paid $15 for that I ended up being allergic to, my hair only reached my ears after the big chop, everything was _so good,_ my shoulders were burnt dark, the highway air was suffocating and hot in my throat, and sweat built up in the creases of my stomach when we stopped for gas and peach iced tea.

And now I’m the Delilah, the stupid asshole, the dissident who accidentally ruined a grown man’s life by just saying shit like that, stone cold. Now I can’t cab it all on being a teenager, because I quit being a teenager two years ago. And the more I think about it, the worse I feel. I wish I hadn't said it in such a mocking way. _Porn sure pays better, doesn't it?_ Well, yeah, Eren, you little bitch, it pays more than the job you never had, oh my god.

Now I want to bring Levi to some random family cookout in my mom's leather salon Subaru Outback and say he can get _all_ the spicy ribs without wiping his hands afterwards so he can leave blissfully dirty, oily fingerprints all over the seats. Despite being so scared of what he thinks of me now, I also want to explain I can be trusted with this.

It feels like a lot of people depend on my silence now, so I have to learn to shut up.


	3. Kool-Aid Type Beat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will definitely endure some more editing once I fix my Macbook. It kind of exploded.
> 
> Find me as [@gazastrippin](https://gazastrippin.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!
> 
> Listen to the official [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/hentaivert/playlist/6yPFlwS4GGLAsIm4Rg8u0v?si=U7HuR0j0RX-MN13SLLlVaA) your friends will hate you for!

I’m going to say it, because no one else will: I think my Adidas joggers make me look like a god.

Generally I’ve been thinking what went through the heads of women in my family when I hit puberty. I know aunt Dina is just plain dirty. She’d slap my ass at family cookouts and wink at me over the table. This behavior hasn’t ceased as I’m growing older; dare I say, it might’ve gotten worse.

If I could make it into a Vice article, I absolutely would. It would be titled “Your Little Nephew’s Been Working On His Arms” and contain erotic descriptions of my juvenile pecs and little butt that I usually suffocated in skinny jeans. “In case you didn’t notice the unnecessarily chesty singlet he’s wearing in the middle of June,” the article would read, “it’s worth noting that your 15-year-old nephew Eren has taken an interest in his own body.”

My mom was a _disaster_ of emotion when I grew my first horrendous moustache and, like, three hairs on my chin. Puberty hit me like a train of ugly. I must’ve had the body odour of a swamp, too. Mom would _not_ stop talking about it on the phone with her cool New York friends. The forever precautious mother she is, she got me a 12-piece box of condoms—my first condoms—probably in case my new, irresistible body attracts too many women. That same box of condoms is still locked up in the bottom drawer of my nightstand and I refuse to throw it out simply because it’s a relic at this point.

It rained the majority of Tuesday, and it rained this entire morning, as well. It’s about eight and my feet are drying out at least. While at the mall, I almost shoplifted some dope pants, but Kendrick Lamar taught me to overcome weakness.

The neon 7-Eleven sign before me pours light on the wet street. There’s a bunch of ducks floating around in the canal. Their quacking is comforting. It makes me think of how my whole childhood was sustained by this fat lie that duck quacks don’t echo.

I just got off the phone with my stress ball mom and the weird, lingering sadness is slowly coming back to me. For the past two days, all I’ve been wondering about is what Levi might be thinking. It got even worse when I found out practice was canceled today. Not moved, canceled. Entirely. It should’ve happened, because it’s Wednesday.

I feel somewhat guilty for his absence. I know this is because of me; it must be. I almost spiritually feel it. He never cancels—he’s only moved it a few hours earlier or later, or whatever, and it’s all been due to completely understandable issues: poorly scheduled practice for kids, his family car that usually runs like a dream but refuses to start up right when he has to be somewhere important, the rare but amusing group chat messages he sends that say something like: “Overslept. Be there in 15 maybe”, as if that _“maybe”_ was the most convincing thing to add, and lastly, Levi’s honest late night Hennessy-aided calls to me, the captain, in which he explains in detail how he doesn’t want to see us _at all_ but that a duty call is a duty call. And he shows up next morning, meticulously hung over, and it’s a fantastic feeling to be the only one who knows he hates having to exist.

And now, because I just have _no_ understanding of what “shut up” means, we’re probably not going to fucking Regional Selects Tournament, or Berlin, or anywhere, ever. In my _delusional_ dreams.

What Levi said was right. I need to grow up.

On a lighter note, I can at least be proud of one thing: it stays persistent that nobody knows what happened. Because I wasn’t very talkative at home, mom assumed I just need some me time, which I’m not really going to have, considering I’m sitting on a wet park bench and waiting for my three beloved gentlemen to arrive. In grief of this whole downhill situation that’s been plowing over my mood, the bad weather and practice being canceled, Jean asked if I’d be up for an improvised soccer practice with Connie and Marco. I said, yeah, why not. I’m way too upset by all the thinking I’ve been doing—probably more thinking than I’ve ever done in my life—so we all gave in for a late night endurance session to not lose the edge while practice is off.

At first, Connie offered playing basketball, but Jean hates basketball, and so do I. I let Jean handle dropping the brutal “no.” (with the period! With the _period!)_ in our group chat, just because I’m too tired and too vulnerable to try and talk Marco and Connie out of it. I wouldn’t power through the “u sad cuz u don’t have a gf boyee” Connie would missile project into my face through my LED display. His and Marco’s motto is that “basketball is the only context in which I can say I hit it so good it came back to me.”

We usually meet up in the park next to Jean’s house. Today isn’t much of an exception.

Jean, Connie, Marco and I would be a squad by urban dictionary definition. You have me, the greasy athlete porn-addict idiot, Jean, the rich #fashionnova baby with his envy-inducing _everything_ , big dick black excellence Connie and eighteen-year-old copycat Marco. I don’t know how well the friendship rectangle we all four share works, but we've been handling each other pretty _okay_. Not all of our interests and personalities match. I mean, there sure are flaws in this, a lot of them.

The main problem is that Connie is the only one who has a girlfriend. To normal people it wouldn’t be an issue, but since time management isn’t his strongest suit, it’s become a problem. She is either constantly by his side when we hang out, smoking weed and eating 7-Eleven’s churros, or he cancels on everything to be with her. And I get it, pussy does things to you. Pussy has that power. It destroys fine men.

Jean… Jean’s just a handful. You would think he’s good with ladies by his 226 Tinder notifications and likes on Instagram, but this specific type of man is inevitably doomed to never find love. Because he receives so much attention, it’s impossible to choose. Every girl he’s been texting with was only surface-level interest. He’s told me we’re too old to open up to a new person and completely immerse them into our lives. I don’t know, maybe I do agree with that. Sometimes a real snack comes by—a girl that I would very willingly date—but then she doesn’t text me back. Jean and I can spend hours talking about how, sometimes, you’ll be looking real cute and still not get a text back.

I have this unreasonable, concentrated hatred towards Marco, so I won’t even power my two brain cells to think about him. He always wears a dusty Nike baseball cap backwards. People who wear their Nike baseball cap backwards are usually like: “I love fast-paced, old-fashioned and gritty playoff hockey. Also, the people in Iraq actually _wanted_ us there.”

I perk up hearing familiar voices from behind.

“I am literally _vowing_ to you that my dick is curved now.”

Jean wheezes at what Marco said. “You can’t break your dick, man, it’s just how it is. It’s just…just left, you know?”

“Go to a chiropractor,” Connie, the godless animal, recommends.

Jean’s laughter turns high-pitched and I can clearly hear him slapping his chest like a suffocating fish. “You—you don’t…”

“What? You mean our team’s old chiropractor never touched your dick?” Connie, audibly worried, asks. “Marco? _Jean?”_

Jean’s explosive snorting rings through the alley with similar force to Elon Musk’s rocket launch.

I giggle in the sleeve of my hoodie and stand up to greet all three of them. Jean and I do our personal handshake (palm, elbow, wrist), Marco settles for a cold shoulder bump, and Connie hugs me—the best example of body language.

“Oh shit, you cut your hair?” I ask and run my hand over Connie’s coily head. “Nice. I liked the braids, though.”

He rubs his head as well. “Yeah… It kept getting in the way and I had the braids for way too long.”

“How’s your nose? Thomas convincingly said Levi broke it.”

Connie’s fingers glide down the bridge of it. “It's not broken, I think. It just made a weird ass sound and flopped.”

“What happened?”

“You ask me. Coach was mad pissed when we arrived, no warm-ups, no nothing. I tried to talk to him and he said “warm up with dodgeball”, and tossed me the ball. I just didn’t expect it to come my way at that fuckin’ speed. Why, you on to something?”

“Just wondering, you know, since practice was canceled. Maybe something big is going on.”

My stupid brain, immediately, goes: “Porn shoots? Oh, porn shoots?”

No. Stop it. Get some help.

“Oh, come on. Coach is pulling that dumb ass spring vacation stunt,” Jean says, kicking at the ground. “He’ll disappear and come back looking like a Bali island snack who took his beautiful wife on vacation and fucked her a thousand babies.”

I feel like I sink even deeper down in my hoodie. “He’s not married.”

“I’m pretty sure he is,” Marco says.

“He’s not, he told me. On Monday.”

Connie chokes on Gatorade and wipes at his mouth. “Are you guys having sleepovers? You paint each other’s toenails and watch Pretty Little Liars while taking turns on who tells their biggest, darkest secret?”

I feel uncomfortable for thinking that it really wouldn’t even be that bad.

“I mean, no, it just kinda came up, and…” I start reasoning, but Jean pipes in to save my skin.

“They _do_ have sleepovers,” he says. “And it’s not Pretty Little Liars, it’s Gossip Girl, you uneducated, uncultured pig.”

“Actually, it’s The Vampire Diaries,” I mention. “Anyway. Levi’s not married, he doesn’t have kids he has legal parental responsibility over, and I’m more than sure he would’ve dropped as much as a “k” in the group chat in response to our spam, so my guess is full moon or Mercury in retrograde.”

“Oh, shit, I think it’s actually full moon tonight.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Do you think we’re getting a substitute?”

“I don’t know. Who could ever do what he does?”

Touché.

We all stand awkward for a few seconds, shifting weight from leg to leg before Marco suggests moving. The field isn’t far from the park; in fact, it’s on the other side of it, so we just walk right across the whole thing. I don’t like the place at night as much as during the day. It's just plain creepy. Thank god I’m a bad bitch and you can’t kill me, otherwise I’d be scared.

I fall back a good portion from the other three, up until the late night post-rain fog hides them completely, and leisurely walk while kicking at some pebbles. A light nudge on my right shoulder makes me jump. Once I see it’s just Jean, I calm down. “God. You literally almost gave me a stroke, you stupid bitch.”

“You were supposed to say you could’ve dropped your croissant.”

“Stop,” I quote the Vine with extreme disinterest, “I could’ve dropped my croissant.”

“You have to sound more shocked.”

“Stop… I could’ve…dropped…my _croissant,”_ I repeat, even less energized than before.

Jean sighs. “It’s back.”

“What’s back?”

“Your depression.”

“Oh, yeah.” I laugh and clear my throat. “Straight up.”

“Have you tried playing twenty minutes of Young Thug at morning and night?”

“Yes. I also listened to a lot of 6ix9ine and overheard my mom saying “gotti, gotti” at breakfast.”

“Okay. Good. You know what I came up with the other day?” Jean asks.

“Huh?”

“So they say… They say that Goldfish is the snack that smiles back—but our soccer coach begs to differ.”

“Oh my god,” I say, like I always would, but this sentence ingrains itself in my mind. The context feels weird—it’s as if Jean found Levi…attractive. “You think he’s hot?”

“Who?”

“Levi.”

Jean sternly looks at the pavement in front of him. With each lamppost we pass, I try to piece out if his expression is thoughtful or if he just didn’t quite hear what I said and is trying to pretend he did—even though it was a question and I’m waiting for an answer.

“Jean,” I chime.

“What?”

“Do you think Levi’s hot?”

“Oh, shit, yeah. I mean, he’s not bad at all, have you seen his glutes?”

“I haven’t really looked at his glutes, no,” I admit, embarrassed.

Of course, now that Jean has brought it up: Levi’s glutes. Great! A whole new part of my brain that was never supposed to be up and running is suddenly shitting out imagery of, I assume, 2013 Levi in Berlin. I’ll be frank and say I think it was the year when men of New Jersey took on the honor to wear shorts over leggings and other embarrassing things that I also had the courtesy to try out and get laughed at by Jean. Levi, on the other side, had managed to find the most form fitting, indescribably shiny polyester Adidas track pants that probably cost around the same as my liver in the black market. Now that Jean dared to open his mouth about Levi’s glutes, I can perfectly recall them, and I don’t like to be aware of this fact.

“I mean his _face_ is fine…” I try to switch it up a bit—but Jean is not having it.

“I don’t know what kind of godly workout routine he has, but he’s just busting out of his t-shirts lately. It’s insane. Gets worse the more you think about it—because he’s taboo. He’s a gift from the Lord to us, bisexual men, that we can’t touch.”

“Why is he taboo?”

Jean side-eyes me. _“Eren_. He’s our _coach.”_

I bite my tongue. I completely overlooked that fact and went straight to “how is he taboo if he’s gay” in my head.

“Yeah, but…point still stands. We’re leaving this year,” I think aloud. “So would it really hurt, Jean?”

“Eren, ya _nasty._ Stop not sounding straight, it’s bad for you.”

This has pushed me even further into a pit of self-destruction. Why the fuck am I still, subconsciously, trying to reason Levi’s career? What he’s occupied with is clear as the sky. It’s weird how some people sort their priorities. I guess it makes sense that anyone would prioritize taking a while off from a physically straining nine-to-five job to have sex—and earn _money_ from doing that—all while maintaining a perfect social image and stable income.

You know what? I’m just salty I can’t do what he does. I wish I had the courage to just go and _be_ on Pornhub. Sex business is relentlessly growing. Every single new game that comes out and includes as little as one female character gets sexualized to the very end—just look at what happened to Overwatch and Bioshock.

Okay, look—I’m not sure what the fuck I’m doing in this world. The only thing I’ve ever been able to successfully do is take good pictures of my abs and keep Snapchat streaks. I sucked at high school, I suck at college, my penis is pretty average, I can’t grow facial hair, I can’t dunk a basketball and all my relationships fail because of some combination of all previously mentioned deficiencies.

And sometimes, even though I look like a snack, I won’t get a text back.

* * *

Anyone else ever feel blatantly destroyed when you shave for an event and the event gets canceled?

I got up uncharacteristically early for an already early class on Friday and decided that this is the day I _shave._ I have big shaving days and lazy shaving days, and the major ones occur about once every hundred years when all the planets align just right. And so I took my handy dandy Braun electric razor dad gave me for my eighteenth birthday and went to town with it.

It’s a proven fact that shaving your balls is an extreme sport. Up to this day, being twenty-one, I have no idea how to do it without bleeding out like Niagara Falls. In the very rare case you _do_ succeed and manage to get a semi smooth shave, it only lasts about forty minutes. And the _itching_ that follows… I’m getting freshman year war flashbacks of how I shaved my dick raw and it’s #not #giving #me #life.

So I do all this in order to make myself feel better about the fact that I singlehandedly ruined a grown man’s career, and some girl I share class with texts me saying morning class is canceled and scheduled for Thursday. You can imagine me going absolutely livid. I shaved for this. I _shaved_ for _this_.

I end up going to school early anyway, despite never doing that. It’s a thing you lose as you age—going places early even if you don’t need to. The older I get, the more I value being ugly and dirty in the comfort of my own bedroom with no one to look at me and say: “You’re ugly and dirty.” I think this is the prominent reason why relationships are so appalling to me. Once you start dating, you automatically have to start trying. Trying to look good, talk better, be some kind of smart shit square intellectual. I protest! I want to wear my Chipotle-stained Adidas hoodie and holey underwear I first beat off to interracial porn in, and eat fried dumplings with my fingers in front of my significant other while still having them say they love me.

I sit in the ghastly empty cafeteria, eating a Clif bar and texting Jean because Jean is sick. We both think it’s from that Wednesday night out with Connie and Marco since it was all rainy and disgusting.

It’s Friday and practice is canceled…again. I kind of miss Levi being here, you know? He had a way around the bad weather with his scornful humor. There’s not much consistency in my life without him around, because soccer is… It’s all I’ve ever really known. Levi’s been my mentor for most of my teenage years, the good (childhood) and the bad (puberty). So I’m beginning to think, while going at my junk because the shave is letting itself known: is it really that bad, what he does, if he still remains a good person?

The fact that he does or used to do porn for a living hasn’t directly affected anyone I know. He does have a professional job, yeah, and I’m not sure how the headmaster is letting this shit exponentially slide, but Levi’s the furthest from being a perv. If anything, our team has only gained from this. I don’t want to give it too much thought, but it feels weird to think that he might still be in the industry just to be able to fund us.

This is really how eating Clif bars be like.

Mikasa, the crestfallen intruder of my conspiracies, rings me asking what I’m doing after class. I let her know Jean’s sick and that paying him a compassionate visit would be wonderful. To my surprise, she agrees on tagging along.

She joins me in the parking lot after I get out and we go to the mall. I’ll say it before anyone else does: bad idea. As if the mall wasn’t compelling enough, there’s also Best Buy and Walmart, all in one place. I think Walmart should be illegal. You walk inside and only the strongest are able to leave. It’s impossible to just go to Walmart and get exactly what you need without getting sidetracked and spending two hours looking at huge discount Lego construction sets you know you _don’t_ need.

When we get out and head for the bus stop, I notice they’ve opened a JCPenney on the corner of the mall. I don’t even know what the inside of a JCPenney looks like. Whatever it is, there’s a crippling aura of desolation being emitted from its inner chambers. I can practically feel my life force draining as soon as I am within the general vicinity of a JCPenney.

We got Jean some fruit, avocados, wholegrain bread and aloe vera drink. Mikasa almost evaporated when I told her Jean and I _love_ texture drinks. Anything with pulp is just fantastic in my book and I don’t understand people who don’t think the same way.

When we got on the bus to Veteran’s park, it was empty, so we settled in the back seats. I checked my phone for any signs that practice might not be canceled. WhatsApp says Levi has last been online twenty minutes ago. I feel like I should have the privilege to know what’s going on—but the fact that we haven’t exchanged a word since that last awkward “I know you do porn, you nasty man” encounter kind of holds me back by a few miles.

I lock my phone and unlock it seconds later. _Last seen today at 12:59._

“Why do you keep checking your phone?” Mikasa asks.

“I’m just waiting for an e-mail,” I lie.

“Huh.”

She turns to look outside the window and sighs.

My eyes run down her thigh almost by accident. I let my gaze land on her pigmented, slightly tan skin. It stirs weird feelings down in my stomach. She has a bit lanky, boyish legs with soft muscle definition. There are a few light, feathery hairs on her upper thigh, but it’s completely smooth from her knees down to her ankles. The shorts she’s wearing are cutting into her thighs. Generally her features are of a thirteen-year-old girl—but with feminine charm. I somehow adore how it all looks put together.

But this doesn’t bring my attention elsewhere. I still feel like I have to reach out to Levi. It can’t possibly get any worse than it already has, can it, now?

I look at Mikasa again. She’s still staring out the window, so I unlock my phone next to my thigh and quickly tap one out in the private chat.

 **[1:23 PM, Friday] Me:** _Hello! I would like to know if soccer practice still exists_

Levi comes online frighteningly quickly and my fingers slip across the screen as I try to press the Home button before I’m witnessed reading his reply. I like to be the cool guy when texting: I read message previews and decide if something requires my immediate attention or if I want to play hard to get.

While that’s going on, I turn to Mikasa.

“So Jean really likes you,” I literally spit the first thing on my mind. “You know that?”

She slides lower in her seat and presses her shins against the seat in front. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve ņever seen him this invested into making something work. Has he texted you or anything? Does he have your number?”

“Unless you _gave_ him my number…” Mikasa stretches. “He tried following me on Instagram two times. When I finally accepted the request, it was a matter of about seven minutes until he liked a post of mine that is four years old.”

“That is…so embarrassing.”

“I know,” she says. “Look, I’m not sure I want to date someone with his reputation. He’s had girlfriends all over New Jersey, and probably more beyond state.”

“It might _seem_ like he’s a fuckboy dick, but… I mean, yes, it does seem like he owns a fleshlight and texts fifty girls simultaneously, but it’s really not like that. He hasn’t been happy the past few years, Mikasa.”

“How come?”

“It’s rumoured among our soccer team that, about five years ago, he met the love of his life or something. Thomas claims she had black, long hair—exactly like yours, to be honest. I think something happened to her family and she had to move. It was a really, really rough break-up, at least to Jean. I met him shortly after that. So my favorite thing to say is a point that will forever stand: pussy does things to you.”

Mikasa’s head falls back against the headrest and she looks away. I seize the opportunity and get my phone to text Jean.

 **[1:32 PM, Friday] Me:** _So are you EVER going to tell me who was the girl that broke your heart and ruined your big dick energy_

 **[1:33 PM, Friday] Me:** _Cuz Mikasa is suspiciously just the most accurate dream girl of yours I could imagine_

 **[1:33 PM, Friday] Me:** _Are you some kind of forbidden long-lost lovers_

 **[1:33 PM, Friday] Me:** _Oh Romeo, oh Romeo, where art thou fat cock Romeo_

_Jean is typing..._

**[1:33 PM, Friday] Jean:** _omg…....shut your big ugly mouth and tell me how far are you_

I look outside. Trees, Starbucks and a big lake.

 **[1:33 PM, Friday] Me:** _We’re at Veteran’s park_

 **[1:34 PM, Friday] Jean:** _I am_

 **[1:34 PM, Friday] Jean:** _LITERALLY_

 **[1:34 PM, Friday] Jean:** _IN BED_

I check the bus’ front screen. The letters on the strip change from “Seneca St.” to “Veteran Memorabilia Park”.

I nudge Mikasa. “Let’s go.”

Even though the ride didn’t last longer than about twenty minutes, the sun has already shied down so it hangs barely above the trees. The air is significantly colder. I get worried about Mikasa in her t-shirt and shorts, but the combat boots and high socks balance it out. Obviously, I offer my varsity jacket, but she doesn’t take it. She’s going to be begging for it ten minutes later, bet.

The walk to Jean’s place is around three minutes. He lives right around the block, so the park’s close to him. I can imagine how nostalgic it feels to see it though his bedroom window, considering how many dates he’s held there and the evenings I’ve spent talking him out of completely masochistic ideas.

“You know what? I don’t think I should go,” Mikasa suddenly says, around half a mile before Jean’s house, and stops in the middle of the pavement. “I think I’ll just grab something at Smoothie King and head out for a walk.”

I pull her aside so she doesn’t get hit by a biker. “Mikasa, we’re literally feet away.”

“Yeah, but it’s just…awkward. We’re not friends or anything. There’s going to be weird tension and stuff.”

“Good lord,” I whine. “What happened?”

She shrugs.

I look around in despair, then back at her.

“We can all get smoothies and, like, go for a walk? Show you a bit of New Jersey’s best town so we don’t have to sit in his room. Maybe it won’t feel as awkward that way. Jean will lend you a jacket, you’re obviously freezing. It’ll be nice, trust me; the park is real pretty.”

Mikasa lifts her head to look up at me. Then she just lets it fall back down, against my shoulder, and wraps her arm around my elbow.

“I’m just so tired of men who want me,” I hear her murmur. “Don’t let him get his hopes up.”

“Alright, I got you.”

We keep walking, now closer to each other, side by side. She emits heat. It’s comforting. Intimate, kind of. If it weren’t for her tan legs flashing in the corner of my eye once in a while, I could easily mistake her for someone else. If I walked with my eyes closed, my hand would probably fish the air for hers. The way we walk reminds me of how it felt to be with a girl, and how long it’s been since the last time I had my heart broken.

It was last year. It was Veteran Memorabilia Park, March… Annie.

“Mikasa?”

“Yes?”

“Is it as lame as I think that I’m reminiscing about my ex right now?”

“That makes two of us,” she says—thank god.

“Well, fuck,” I announce.

“Double that.”

From that point on, I try to avoid our hands brushing.

We meet Jean on his way out the door. He’s still in socks, so I assume he only got ready to stay inside. I zip my bag open and hand him all the food. Mikasa also reaches out and gives him the fishnet bag of avocados.

“Get dressed,” I say, zipping up my bag, “and grab around five bucks. We’ll show Mikasa some Jersey highlights and get smoothies.”

Jean agrees and doesn’t say anything else. I notice him watching Mikasa while I talk about our ride and the people I saw in town. I also talk just to fill the silence while he pulls on his shoes and jacket, and ask if he could lend Mikasa one of his warmer garments since she’s bound to freeze her ass off.

We end up walking straight to Smoothie King. Jean gets strawberry, Mikasa gets banana, and I choose a mix of both with blueberry on top. When the cashier asks if the orders are all separate and Mikasa is about to hand her a crumpled five dollar bill, Jean gently pushes her hand to the side and pays for all three of us. I’m not exaggerrating when I say this is the only girl who has brought out a quality as good as generosity in Jean.

His green varsity jacket was a bit baggy on our lady. It hung down over her ass, covering her shorts, so to someone from behind, it looks like she’s not wearing anything else. I can’t quite put my finger on how Mikasa feels walking around with a huge “KIRSCHTEIN: 10” on her back, but I sure know Jean absolutely loves it.

For the most part of the afternoon, I walk between them both. But when we reach the bridge and stop to throw little pebbles in the water, I notice Jean moving closer to her. And since I saw no sign of protest from Mikasa, I let it be that way. You wouldn't believe how much Jean likes her company—and it’s crazy how nostalgic it gets when we enter the park.

The sky is dark purple, the lanterns light up row by row. Old wooden benches, green trash cans, brick pavement, veteran statues with golden plating and flower beds…  I’ve seen all this countless times. I remember every summer night spent in this park, lying on the ground surrounded by budding bushes when everything smells like being young, Jean smoking cigarettes only on that rare “night at Veteran’s park” occasion… Listening to Black Label Society, or Red Hot Chili Peppers if we felt exceptionally #moody, talking endless smack about girls and what they’ve done to us, The Last Good Men, and confessing only two minutes later that, yeah, in fact, every girl that has left us has had fantastic judgment because we’re the global, obsolete pieces of fucking shit.

The nights spent here with Annie overshadow the more beautiful memories. How she got me into 70’s music, how she force-fed me Bee Gees and tried to explain her father’s role in London’s punk rock scene. Making out by _that_ tree, the one right _there_ that hopefully still shows the remains of our E+A heart-shaped scraping I crossed out in anger after our breakup.

Oh, just fuck all of that bullshit. I’m going to get home, get in my big fucking bed, eat burritos and watch Vine compilations. It just gets me mad jealous to see how well Jean and Mikasa get along.

Later on I fake a telephone call and let them walk a few feet ahead.

All I can think of on my way home is my phone I’m squeezing in my left hand and the drafted message of “Do you ever think about me anymore?” that I’m never going to send. And once I get home, get in my big fucking bed with a hot, greasy burrito in hand, my absolutely “fantastic” mood reduces to a zero: I was left on read by Levi at 1:23 PM.

* * *

Saturday mornings are most soothing when the low hits me. I usually lay in bed for hours and think about everything that’s happened lately: all the people I’ve seen, shows I’ve watched, where my big dick energy has went, and so on.

I love waking up on a Saturday and realizing I haven’t showered in a few days. (Read: with “few” I might mean “two” and might also mean “a week”.) There is _so_ much satisfaction in scratching an oily scalp, don’t @ me. But to procrastinate showering, I go on Instagram.

There are unavoidable posts of classic Friday party pictures and nights out. The usual 20+ notifications on all the meme groups I never check. I scroll past two incredibly disgusting showcases of PDA and throw up in my mouth just a little bit.

My mom wants me to have a girlfriend. She bugs me about it all the time. Compared to most of my friends, I’m kind of not the guy who seeks a relationship just to count as being “taken”. I also don’t want to sound pretentious and say I’m saving myself for marriage or looking for the love of my life, it’s just that relationships, to me, are mostly a huge inconvenience. I don’t want to explain to my big titty goth girlfriend that, yes, I do love her, but yes, I also have soccer practice almost every day of the week.

But Connie has always been right: I’m not someone to put up with it. I’m not trained for that “looove” bullshit. My only passion was, is and will be sports, as mad gay as that sounds. Maybe in a few years, when I get over striving to be an elite, I’d start thinking about things like love, sex and marriage, and everything that comes along—that is, of course, unless I meet the snack of my _life_ , the full-course meal that will make me look back and say: “I want this _right_ _now_ and I don’t care what it costs.”

So, I'm used to the idea that mom wants everything she can’t always get. A daughter, Jennifer Aniston’s body, Playboy magazine D-cups, a Porsche, a villa in Italy, and so on. My mom has a pattern of deciding if someone is good for me or not. She always thinks she knows what’s best for me, and that might be the deciding factor for my love life to fail. Her standards reach up to space. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like a relationship is something really high-maintenance and important, when really, people stopped having sex to reproduce centuries ago, so having a significant other is absolutely unnecessary if we speak in retrospect.

The reason I woke up this ungodly hour is another Lawn Mowing Saturday. Coincidentally, every single neighbor of mine just _loves_ mowing the lawn on days all I wish for is to stay in bed until the afternoon. What’s even better: they schedule it so that the soundtrack of my Saturday is just relentless mowing buzz. Once Neighbor A is finished, Neighbor B starts mowing. This is so sad. Alexa, play Despacito.

Right now it’s Erwin’s turn, and I can hear his old people radio through the obnoxious sound. I press a pillow to my face, but peel it off right after. April sun is just fuck shit hot in the morning. All I have on are socks and grey briefs, and I’m already sprawled all over the bed to get as much AC goodness as possible.

A look to my right reveals the nightstand. There’s a few day old glass with a lemon slice, red-striped straw and a bit of water in it. This is _the_ nightstand I always keep locked because there are the condoms I’m never using and lube I’ve only used on myself last Valentine’s day—which, I know, is frankly very sad, and it looks like I’m going to have to bother Alexa with the Despacito again. The fact in itself that I’m _still_ jerking it on Valentine’s day nine years after I first did it is so embarrassing I cover my eyes with my forearm and just lay still until I’m able to think of something else.

My room is quite nice, but there’s no use of a nice room if you don’t show it to anyone. I know Jean loves my house and Connie's always musing as well, but I can’t see what makes my place so much better than Jean’s literal mansion and Connie’s cozy two-story house. It’s probably that my mom’s an interior designer. They know something about housing that mere mortals do not.

After staring at the posters on my ceiling, I decide it's time to get up.

Still in boxers, I land on my leather office chair that immediately sticks to my bare, sweaty skin and run Spotify. Today sounds like… Kanye West’s “ye”.

I force on my clothes from yesterday and brush my teeth. There's breakout on my right cheek and I'm having a hard time trying not to touch it.

Erwin's lawn mower has finally fallen silent by the time I'm ready to walk downstairs for breakfast, so on my way to the stairs, I peek out the window. He's pushing the machine around the house, to the boiler room. He's got some kind of an advanced lawn mower. It cuts in six different layers and stuff. We borrow it once a month.

I figure I might mow our terrible lawn today, since I don't have anything better to do—other than mopping around the house, worrying about Levi’s reputation. And so, with a long, tear-filled gaze over our outrageously clover-filled yard, the decision is made.

I open my window and yell: "Oh, good morning, Erwin, you fantastic man!"

"Good morning, Eren!" He yells back.

He is _so_ pure at heart. Erwin is somewhat _exactly_ like a golden retriever if a golden retriever had a master's degree in history. If he had a tail, he would wag the _fuck_ out of it. The worst part about everything that Erwin is is that he’s equally gullible as he is universally attractive. It’s literally laughable how much he resembles comic-version Captain America in a blue Gymshark t-shirt and a fucking Victorian era royal bloodline Englishman in a suit.

I hang out the window, which is a complete casualty by now. “Can I borrow your lawn mower? I'm mowing our lawn today.”

“Oh, absolutely!” He beams. “Carla already told me she wants to make you do yard work on a weekend off.”

My smile dies. “God, Erwin, I _know_. She talked about moving the magnolias to the corner, completely obliterating the pink rose bush and spending, like, fifty million fuck— _freaking_ dollars, just to have a hedge.”

“But that’s so much work!” Erwin says.

“That’s what I’m saying. So, do you want, like, hot croissants and fresh juice as currency exchange for the mower?”

“That sounds great, please, I only had an egg.”

One (1) _singular_ fucking egg he had… I fucking can’t. He had _one_ fucking _egg_ for breakfast. I _dream_ of the day I could wake up in the morning, walk to the fridge and immediately know that I will only have _one_ egg.

“Amazing,” I hold my laughter and whip around to get downstairs. Over my shoulder, I yell: “I’m on my way—literally!”

I rush out of my room, leaving the window wide open. Our stairs have tiny mats that only cover a half of each step—the rest is slippery wood, so trying to speed downstairs almost ends with me breaking my neck and scaring my mother to death. I slide into the kitchen thanks to my naked body aerodynamic and socks, and blast my mom finger guns right in the face—and it makes her jump and slap my chest.

“Jesus Christ!” She squeaks. “Leave my house, you naked monster.”

“I’m doing your garden things today,” I proudly present and open cupboards one by one, looking for my soccer ball bowl, “the yard, the flowers, I’ll take care of that stuff. But Erwin’s coming over for breakfast and I have _no_ idea what to throw together, so you could be great help and whip up the good-good. Where is my bowl?”

She just stares at me, “Best Mom” coffee mug in hand. “Do the what?”

I shut the last cupboard, having failed to find what I was looking for. “Can you just make breakfast?”

“Eren, I’ve had about one minute of sleep tonight. Instead of _whipping up the_ _good-good,_ I’d very much prefer getting in bed and sleeping until they show Sex and the City at 8.”

“Sex and the City is making you wear flashy leopard print and go on a lot of “girl dates”. I don’t like this. It’s a show for women edging on menopause and talking about eating pussy over coffee,” I say while pouring myself some OJ. Sometimes I walk to the fridge and chug milk straight out of the carton. It makes me feel like the older brother in a G-rated family comedy. “And _where_ is my bowl?”

“In the dishwasher. So eating pussy is a bad thing?”

I choke on the juice and huff inside the glass. “No,” I say after I’ve wiped my mouth, “I’m just saying I’ve had enough of the talk at school. Showing up to the office in dad’s old Subaru with a Brazilian blowout, high heels and both titties out is doing _me_ dirty—and I _know_ that this behavior is all just Sex and the City.”

She slowly sips from her mug and side-eyes me.

I lean in. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She _squints_.

“Mom,” I whisper in a warning tone. “Don’t you _dare_ give me Sex and the City quotes right now.”

“I will not be judged by you or society. I will wear _whatever_ —”

“Mom—”

“—and _blow_ whomever I want—”

I cover my face with my palm.

“—as long as I can breathe—and kneel,” she proudly finishes. “Fantastic quote. I wish I had known that for my yearbook.”

“I’ll get the food ready myself because you are _nasty_. Has dad sent anything?” I ask over my glass of OJ.

“Oh, yeah. He did, last night. He sent pictures titled “The View from the Windows of My Cottage”. It's just three sunsets. It's three identical pictures of the same sunset from the same cottage.”

“But that’s _fantastic.”_

“I am contemplating selling his car and buying myself a one-way ticket to Greece.”

“Oh, come on. I’d like him sending sunset pictures to me. At least I’d appreciate them—I mean, you’ve seen my Instagram. It’s just sunsets. Sometimes I post pictures of myself shirtless. And before you ask, no, it’s not for attention and validation. It's for all the pussy eating you've been talking about on the phone with your New York friends.”

Now my mom is the one to explode in her coffee mug.

After recovering from mom’s enthusiastic commentary about my growth spurts and public body display, I pull on a hoodie and basketball shorts, and run over to Erwin’s house, leaving the breakfast to her.

After pushing the lawn mower to our yard and setting it up, I get back at Erwin's and plop down on a chair on his terrace. My mom sets down a whole plate of buttery croissants and scrambled eggs. Erwin prepares coffee in a French press for the only two adults that are going to drink it, and brings a mug of Nesquik hot chocolate for me.

I thought breakfast was going well until Erwin starts talking a whole lot about education and it makes me tense in my seat. I pretend to be picking off pale berries from a pesky bush that wouldn't leave my bare thigh alone while they talk about this.

“And so it's come to my attention that Eren could use some help with college.” Erwin announces and falls back in his chair after destroying a whole croissant in under a minute. “I've been hearing it's getting difficult.”

I deadpan him from the other side of the table and don't risk looking at mom.

It's definitely Levi's work, now that I think of it. Fuck, man! Just because he has access to everything I have or haven't reached in college doesn't mean he can just talk about it with Erwin and then let _Erwin_ bring it up at breakfast with my fucking _mom_ , dude. Because Erwin just is like that: he’ll think it’s for better good.

I finally look at mom and she's frowning. If I told her that gives people wrinkles, she would never, ever frown again. “Are you talking about tuition? Because he's on scholarship.”

“He skips class and sleeps during the few that he does attend. What's more: he left volleyball.”

Mom scratches her nose. “Yeah, that's my fault. I let him leave the team.”

“At least he did it after the championship,” Erwin sighs. “Well, it's done now.”

“Last time I checked, I'm not The Invisible Man,” I say.

“I'm sorry, Eren,” Erwin says—in that heartfelt golden retriever manner.

We all sit in silence. I'm trying to figure out why Levi thought it'd be a great idea to tell Erwin I left volleyball knowing it would get me in _so_ much shit if I hadn't told mom firsthand.

“Well, I don't know… Eren's never been the one to fail a class,” mom ponders.

“Calculus,” I whisper.

“You failed calculus?”

“Oh, you haven't heard?”

Erwin joins in. “Point is, you need some help with it.”

“Does your private school have anyone to help him out?” Mom asks Erwin. “Eren's just lazy sometimes. Have you seen his mood swings lately? I thought I'd seen the last of it when he turned seventeen. One day I was watching Sex and the City and he almost broke the remote trying to pry it from my hands. That day I realized how important soccer is to him.”

“I watch Sex and the City too,” Erwin suddenly says.

I decide I won't comment on that. Mom, apparently, swallows whatever she has to say as well.

I sit up straight and start collecting the crumbs on my plate with my fingers. “Well… Can I get a tutor that doesn't eat up our middle-class income, or is that, like, legendary? Can't _you_ tutor me?”

He sighs and pushes the sleeves of his shirt up. “You're majoring in coaching. I teach history. There's a lot in between, and I'd help you if I had the time. I'm split between two schools at the moment.”

“Thanks.” I shove the crumbs in my mouth.

“ _Don't_ be _rude_ to _Erwin.”_ Mom pinches my side with every other word.

“Thanks,” I repeat.

Erwin zooms in on the basil leaf on his plate he left untouched.

“See, I have to think about it,” he says, still absent minded. “You don't need a tutor. You just need some intelligent, motivating friends to spend time with. And you absolutely do need a job.”

I look him dead in the eye. “I absolutely do _not.”_

“Yes, you do. You need to learn good store policy and socialize. I think it's just that you have too much free time on your hands and that demotivates.”

“But I'm, like, always doing something,” I say.

“But you dance to music that was on the radio when I was born about every morning,” Erwin says—and he's just about real damn right. “There's this one student I know, Armin. I could ask him to help you. For free. You both went to the same school.”

“I have literally no memory of anyone named Armin.”

“I know. You weren't too friendly during high school.”

“How old is he? Like, twenty-four?”

“He turns twenty this fall.”

I choke. “What? He’s _nineteen?_ Are you trying to tell me a nineteen-year-old surpasses me in brain activity?”

Erwin smiles. “Yes,” he says.

I feel utterly destroyed and look over at mom. Why is _she_ smiling, too?

“What?” She throws her braid over her left shoulder. “I'm happy you're switching things up, even if it's just for a short while.”

“Hey, hey, hey, nobody said I'm doing this!” I warn. “Armin might be too busy to help me.”

“You sound too hopeful, Eren.”

“That was my point.”

* * *

“Let's go get lunch before practice,” Jean said and never showed up to the cafeteria, that little spawn of hell.

I stand in line and tap my wallet against my thigh.

It’s Monday. Practice hadn't claimed for itself to be canceled, and I’m in bliss. However, I didn't see Levi arrive at school this morning; his white Jeep is easy to spot in the parking lot when it’s actually there. I didn’t see him walk around either, and about _right now_ is the time he usually comes down to the cafeteria.

When I said what I said, I didn't aim at losing the best coach I've ever had. And it’s not just me who’d lose a coach, it’s so many more people who depend on his job. I still feel stupid for having wasted almost an entire week on just feeling bad about what I said. I’ve never, not once in my life felt bad about saying something, and now, at twenty-one, I’m suddenly stressed out over talking to a porn star. That sounds wrong. I’ll help myself to the door.

The line moves forwards, but there’s still people ahead of me. I check my phone meanwhile. Jean (2) flashes on screen.

 **[2:40 PM, Monday] Jean:** _what do u think_

 **[2:40 PM, Monday] Jean:** _is practice happening or can i like leave_

 **[2:42 PM, Monday] Me** : _If you leave and it’s on, I'll help Levi when he beats you up_

 **[2:42 PM, Monday] Me:** _If you stay and it gets canceled, we get pizza_

 **[2:42 PM, Monday] Jean:** _i dont see how i lose either way_

 **[2:42 PM, Monday] Me:** _Shit_

 **[2:42 PM, Monday] Me:** _Me neither_

 **[2:42 PM, Monday] Me:** _Let's just go skate_

 **[2:43 PM, Monday] Jean:** _queen of ideas_

I get guacamole and chips by Jean's further request. I had to make sure these were gluten free, because they’ve slapped neon “gluten free” stickers on everything I'm not too concerned about: for example, steamed potatoes and stir fried rice. I know there's a lot of girls at my school who do follow multiple diets and avoid gluten just for sport. I avoid gluten for the sole reason that, once ingested, it wriggles its dirty gluten fingers into my cells and makes me lethargic and swollen.

I look around the cafeteria to find an empty corner I can hide in, but all of my favorite spots are taken, so I occupy the table immediately to my left. My seat is facing the door and I have the best opportunity to just be walked in on with a chip mid-air.

Each time the door swings open, I pray I could finally shake the loneliness and have a light chat with someone. But no one I know comes in, and so I occupy myself with the chips. The next time the door opens, I look up with strong delay, ready to be disappointed again. But there he is, in all his naughty porn star glory: Levi Ackerman.

I realize something has happened to my legs—I can’t move them an inch. Like a cornered animal, I sit there, chip in hand, _definitely_ a smear of guacamole above my lip—not that I can wipe it off. The dog sitting in a burning apartment, drinking coffee and saying “this is fine”? Same energy. Levi hasn’t noticed me yet, so I quickly stuff the chip in my mouth and wipe it with my sleeve. To avoid possible eye contact and look normal, I slowly reach down in my pocket and pat up my phone.

And as if he could read my mind, he turns his head and looks straight at me. I abort the mission and pull my phone out in less than a second, acting like I have something awfully important to deal with.

 **[2:58 PM, Monday] Me:** _MAMAAAAA_

 **[2:58 PM, Monday] Me:** _OOOOOOOOH_

 **[2:58 PM, Monday] Me:** _DIDN’T MEAN 2 MAKE U CRY_

 **[2:58 PM, Monday] Mom:** _Eren sweetie_

I look up at Levi. He has his hands in his pockets, and he’s slowly strolling towards me.

I look back down at my phone.

 **[2:58 PM, Monday] Me:** _IF IM NOT BACK AGAIN THIS TIME TOMORROW_

 **[2:58 PM, Monday] Me:** _CARRY ON CARRY ONNN_

_Mom is typing..._

**[2:58 PM, Monday] Mom:** _Calm down youre hormonal_

 **[2:59 PM, Monday] Mom:** _Love U sweetie :)_

I look up.

He’s heading _over._

I swear on my life that, at this very moment, I feel like shitting my pants.

So there he finally is: the answer to all of my questions. Where has he been, looking this good? He’s more tan, healthier, well-dressed. Could he have been on vacation, without telling any of us about it? Or is it that his porno company makes him look like that? What did he think of all that late session rendezvous I did, coming off as a blatant porn addict? Does he even think any of it? If he does, do you think it's a personal issue?

Do you think he's been thinking about it? For some reason, a large part of me hopes he has—because _I_ have, and it hasn't been the easiest time spent. I hope it's been wrecking him inside out just like it's been absolutely rawing me, too.

Levi sits down at my table and pushes closer to it. Every single though ceases along with my ability to move, speak, think, or do anything other than gaze right at him.

“Hi. What's that?” He asks and stares straight at my plate.

“What's what? Hi,” I gargle. "Hello."

“Hello. That.” He points at my plate. “That whole thing.”

“It’s guacamole,” I immediately exclaim. “I _love_ guacamole.”

I look down at my plate. It looks like a fucking war zone.

Levi also looks down at my plate. Then he looks back at me.

“You sure love this dish,” he says.

“Yes. Yes, a lot.”

None of us say anything for a while.

“You got a little something…” Levi murmurs and points at his upper lip.

I wipe at my mouth. “Did I get it?”

“No. There’s just—hold on.” He reaches over the table and wipes the corner of my mouth with his knuckle. “Done.”

I sit there, stunned. He just wiped my damn mouth. _My mouth._ My mouth, people, out of all things he could wipe, he went at my _mouth_. It feels needless to say it would be more "no homo" if he straight up ate my whole ass instead of—in a very caring, gay manner—sliding his knuckle over my lip. I am as speechless, completely and utterly #shook as I'm weirdly flustered. It's unheard of that Levi carries an ounce of physical affection or whatever on earth that just was, but maybe I'm really sucking my depression's dick right now, assuming that even wiping my mouth clean of guacamole has romantic undertones.

“Thanks?” I finally try.

“I spent twenty minutes looking for you. I want to talk.”

“About what? But yeah, me too.”

“I'm quitting,” he simply states.

I drop the chip I had just collected the courage to eat. “You’re— _what?”_

“Yeah.”

And so, ladies and gentlemen still reading, I have come to conclude that Levi Ackerman must be the only man who can make me cry with two simple words: "I'm quitting."

It wasn't like I hadn't thought this would happen, but I've been pushing it to the back of my head this whole week, avoiding this crazy idea that we'd have to part ways not only physically and professionally, but emotionally. I'm upset and undeniably very cornered in this situation—not to mention powerless—and the unshakeable feeling that I must've hit the hammer on the head and pushed him to the point retirement is the only option, I'll say it loud and clear for the people in the back: it's destroying me.

I sit frozen for a few seconds and then my jaw drops. “Okay. Okay. What—?”

Levi rubs his temple. “Don't ask why.”

 _“Why?_ Is it because of me?”

He ignores my question. “I'm letting you know first because you're the only one to gain any sufficient damage from it. Regionals are coming and you'll have to take hold if you want to keep playing in the elite. You have to stay on the team and try to manage this season on your own, because soccer dad won't be kissing your ass much longer.”

“What about going to Berlin…?” I weakly ask.

“I doubt Berlin is happening. I'll tell everyone about it before practice.”

I sit there, a little dazed. “What sufficient damage are you talking about, anyway? Think about everyone else on the team who need your coaching like their life depends on it. I understand that you've evaluated my skill to be far beyond the rest of the team, but that doesn't change the fact that you coach twenty plus more people. Regionals are just months away. Can’t you stay for the summer? It would completely total our chances—”

“You don't have to make me feel guilty about this, alright?” He remains collected. “It's a decision I made and I believe it’s the right thing to do. I'm sorry, but things won't always go your way.”

I shiver and drag a hand over my face to calm down. Some nervous sweat had built on the bridge of my nose. I really hope he didn't notice that. “No, _I'm_ sorry. I'm just...really shocked. The Berlin games this year... It's the best opportunity for me to get noticed. It's the _only_ opportunity for me to get signed.”

He just looks at me and says: “I know.”

“Are you leaving only because I saw you on Pornhub? Like, again, I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Trust me, I also wish I could un-see it, it's not that I'm a big fan of being aware of the fact that you did porn. But is it because of me? I just want to know so there's at least one thing I can never forgive myself about.”

Levi looks away. “No.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re completely immune to that, though.”

“Well, it doesn't fucking shake me, if you're wondering,” he says. And after a moment of obvious hesitating, he asks: “Did you tell anyone?”

“So you _are_ concerned.”

“No. Did you?”

“No.”

He leans in. “Really? Wasn't that too tempting for our local varsity star and skater ambassador Eren?”

“You don't have to mock me for skating. But yeah, straight up, really. I mean, it felt weird to be the only one who knows, but…” My voice fades out as he lifts his brows. “Stop that. I haven't told anyone and I'm not going to. It's too weird to talk about.”

“Are you gay?”

I feel heat explode in my face. 

While it's completely reasonable for him to ask that, it rubs me the wrong way—mostly because I already see no way out of this. Levi will assume the answer he personally believes no matter what I manage to come up with. The question itself is impossible to dodge, unless life blows me a kiss and someone pulls the fire alarm, a tornado comes crashing or the world ends immediately this second. If I say "no", he'll call bullshit on me. If I say "yes", I'm signing a pact with the Devil. If I get defensive, he'll mock me. If I go into full offense, that's just another way of saying "yes", but with a dash of "I have to ooze of testosterone to make it look like the only man I love is myself". 

But maybe a stern "no" would do. After all, I don't have much choice.

“No,” I finally gargle. “No, I'm not gay.”

Levi crosses his arms. His expression clearly implies he doesn’t believe me, like I said. “But you found the video.”

“You can't have a video on Pornhub and expect nobody from New Jersey is going to see it. I just…happened to find it.”

“For one, that tape is _five years old,”_ he drags the last three words out. “It won't just pop up on the front page. Old videos don’t obey the new algorithm. What’s even better…”

“What?”

His lower lip jerks a little as he tries not to smile, and he looks outside the window.

“Are you making fun of me?” I ask, thunderstruck.

“No, Eren. I’m trying to come up with the least painful way of saying that videos on Pornhub’s gay category don’t show up elsewhere, strictly because of taste and preference. It's a common guideline people follow, except it's not lesbian-inclusive."

Oh, yeah.

Fuck.

I have nothing but clear air to justify myself with. “Look—whatever. Maybe I was looking for something.”

“Gotcha,” he gloomily says. Now he thinks I'm gay. But—he’s leaving, so who cares.

“Maybe now that you think I’m inherently a gay motherfucker, would you tell me the reason behind your leave? I just fail to see how it's your call alone that you come and go whenever seems more convenient.”

Levi doesn’t answer. Should I have said “gay fatherfucker”?

“It’s business,” he finally says.

 _“That_ business?”

Levi actually glares. “Calm down. You don't have to think about me. Think about your future and keeping hold on your scholarship.”

I find it funny how he says I'm not supposed to think about him, yet he's been on my mind for the past week and I'm just _all_ about that shit.

I push the leftover chips around. “Does anyone else know?” I ask, and add: “About the video, not the leave.”

“I’m not obliged to share that information with you, am I?”

“It can't get worse than this,” I say. “What about Erwin?”

Levi laughs—I think. “Yeah, Erwin. And headmaster Pixis, too.”

“Pixis?” I choke out. “Even Pixis knows?”

“Well, he has my file. Unless he hasn’t even looked at it, he should know.”

“What a thrill.”

“I know.” Levi suddenly zones out.

I awkwardly nibble on my sweatshirt zipper to avoid staring at him like that.

“I know,” Levi then repeats and comes out of it. “Look, I have to go. Practice is at the usual 3:30. Whatever you do, please be there. It might be the last time we’re all together.”

That hurts.

“They won’t be happy about this. Please think it through.”

“You can't imagine how hard it is.”

“I'll be moral support,” I say.

“Great. I'm counting on you.” Levi stands up. I watch him dust off his thighs—oh, his _glutes!_ I hate Jean, I _hate_ Jean. “You're a great kid.”

I scoff at the “kid”, but stand up along with him and get my tray. “One more question.”

“Yes?”

“Is there a chance you’ll come back?”

“Eren, I don't know,” he says—and it honestly sounds like he doesn’t. “Don't get mad. You'll figure things out. Life won't end if you switch a coach or two. It's just permanent change you'll forget about in a week.”

“I know,” I distantly murmur.

“You’ll be fine without me, Captain Jaeger.”

Levi has no idea how wrong he is.

But neither do I.


	4. Year Of The Snitch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I'm just _way_ too fucking stoked for S3, you get an early update. I have been watching an awful lot of Law  & Order so this is extremely dramatic and someone has to tell me to tone it the fuck down. I'm trying to work this so that it reads more smoothly. Ya feel? I hope ya feel.
> 
> Find me as [@gazastrippin](https://gazastrippin.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!
> 
> Listen to the official [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/hentaivert/playlist/6yPFlwS4GGLAsIm4Rg8u0v?si=U7HuR0j0RX-MN13SLLlVaA) that _will_ make you think of your ex!

“So I put together your summer schedule last night, and it round up to this: you'll have three days off every week, instead of one, because no one wants to give you the time of the day that I did. There will be two varying days of practice with a substitute coach and two days of endurance, weightlifting and strategic practice. The upcoming season is either canceled or delayed until the new coach arrives and puts the substitute to rest—Connie, no, I don't know, don't ask—and the sports hall will possibly be under construction for the summer. I received IM's results from maintenance last week and they said I can get fucked.”

Levi sighs. It's very silent here, for the first time.

“Shit. This hall has been here since forever, what flawed safety are they…” Some scribbling follows. “Alright, fuck it. Next. I signed my leave very abruptly, so I doubt your next superior is going to appear on the first day. It takes time to find someone new, so I'll still very unofficially hang around until I'm sure someone can take care of you. Next. Yes, I do want Hennessy. Now...what else? I think I covered most of it.”

I switch weight to my other foot and watch Levi scratch his jawline as he digs through all the papers in his hand.

“So you're, like, done coaching us,” someone in the back states.

“Yes.” Levi's voice is almost too joyful, like he'd been expecting someone to word it in his stead to avoid the weight of it.

 _“Why?”_ Connie asks with a lot of emotion in that one word. “You were the only one who ever got us anywhere. We wouldn't be so close to the elites if it weren't for you, coach. We won the Regional Selects Cup for years straight because of you. We got in this year's Berlin finals last summer. Was your “everything for the team” just some bullshit? You're like a big brother to all of us. Just… Come on, man.”

I might be the only one to appropriately notice the split moment Levi had absolutely _nothing_ to say.

“It's adult problems,” Levi claims, looking somewhere past us, and I know it's not entirely true.

Nobody says anything. We're all waiting for a legitimate explanation, or maybe for him to just _expand_ on the subject, really, because right now it looks like he's going on vacation to Malibu for some old people fun. I have to say, however—Connie really did hit a nerve about the brother thing. And we only say “everything for the team” when it's crucial, so that must've obliterated Levi.

“Oh, fuck it! _Okay.”_ Levi throws all his papers, schedules and documents on the floor and drags his palm across his forehead. “Okay. Let's be honest with each other. I'll be the most open person I can right now.”

I frown.

“I'm a shit coach,” he confesses. “And I never really graduated.”

“What does that mean?” Jean puckers up behind number forty-two. “You're not certified?”

“Some former athletes and accomplished coaches work for colleges, and others make it into the professional field. There is no degree that gets good players into coaching positions, and that's where I am: the college dropout who got lucky.”

Jean looks at me and we share a short while of that “???” meme.

I turn back to Levi. “But Pixis hasn't had issues with this for years, and neither has any committee or whatever. Why don't you literally _just stay?”_ I suggest before anyone else has the chance to. “Have you even seriously considered that a new coach won't adapt in time for the season?”

“And neither will we,” Jean adds.

Yeah, I'll admit it! I thought of threatening Levi with leaving the team myself, but then I realized he is the only one to gain from this whichever way it goes. It doesn't matter what we think about this. He is a stubborn and unlovable little person who has his own life pieced together completely separate from us, the team, as a concept. I understand that—or, am trying to. It's not easy to come to terms with the idea that someone could just fling years of hard work in the void. If I had ever done at least a quarter of what Levi has, I could never quit, no matter what happens.

Which is exactly why I didn't say anything else. Which sucks, because I probably should've. But then again, I know my own coach well enough to be sure he won't buy my sentimentality and tantrums. I made sure of that back in the cafeteria.

Levi looks at Jean and I. “This conversation isn't worth it, Eren. I'm done coaching here and I think I'm done coaching in general. I couldn't quit this to work on another team, no matter what money I'm offered. These were great years, boys. You're—you've proved to be my favorite.”

“Dude,” Connie whispers to me, “he _stuttered.”_

“I know.”

“Here comes the money talk,” Jean says. “Bet.”

“I'd be lying if I said my salary isn't playing a big role in this,” Levi resumes—just like Jean called. “Don't think that I only care about money. I don't. But a lot of my personal funds go into your growth, and it's beginning to interfere with my life too much to be left ignored. I've skipped rent for you, showered at school, couchsurfed, eaten nothing but outdated protein bars and Walmart potatoes, been dragged through dirt trying to prove the committee year and year again that you're worthy of sponsorship, but I _still_ don't have the money to help fund this season—and I'm sorry for that.”

Jean murmurs something I don't catch.

“What was that?” I ask.

“I said, how is he couchsurfing if he drives a car like that? His 2015 Cherokee rounds up to twenty grand _used.”_

I shrug. “Chances are he pays up monthly. I don't think he could come up with twenty grand in a whiff like that, but…”

And then I shut myself up and pretend I'm listening to Levi.

Of _course_ he could. I know it, you know it— _but no one else does._ I don't know what kind of money porn makes, or what makes you a more valuable sex machine on the market than others, but I believe that white beauty parked behind school is entirely backed by dirty money.

“I think I've said everything now. You'll be getting new uniforms next month. I ordered them after your fall measurements and fixed a detail or two based on observations. I pulled some off of Connie's shoulders and Jean's waist, I think, and put more length for Thomas. Eren, you've gotten much wider.”

I just stand with my mouth open as Jean pinches at my stomach (that I'm sucking in because everyone is looking at my midriff now) and says: “It's the kebab coupons, it's the kebab coupons.”

I squint as Levi looks at me; but he just smiles. “You've all done a great job. You're like a second family that grew up too quickly. I remember watching your tiny asses run around the park under a different coach; back then, I wouldn't have imagined coaching you up to the very elites. Now, even though it's hard to let go, I know I have to. I would, eventually, no matter what. I truly am sorry things have to be this way, but it will get better—after every winter comes a summer. I know every single one of you facing me right now is capable of adapting to new circumstances.”

"Speech!" I weakly lift my fist. I like exactly nothing about Levi quitting.

His final words are the cue to a time bomb: “I love you all,” he says, “and you are now dismissed.”

Panic ensues. Between a series of “coach, really, this is hilarious” and “you can't leave us”, someone protests by climbing the rope behind. I see at least two teammates run to the stacked high jump mattresses and slam into them, and Connie just lies down on the floor and crosses his forearms on his chest.

“Wake me up when he returns,” he says, eyes closed. 

“And that's the tea for today. Wig. I'm taking the bus,” Jean says, arms crossed. "I didn't think Levi was this easy. If money really was the problem, he would've told us about it like he always did. We run on donations anyway.”

“So you finally see that money isn't the actual problem?” I try not to sound defensive. “There's something more to this, I think. Something serious. Not money. It's bigger than money.”

“Like _a lot_ of money? You heard him say it.”

Well, maybe he's right. I'm in no position to judge or assume, not now when things are even less clear than before.

On our left, Connie laughs a bit hysterically to catch Levi's divided attention again. He's still lying on the floor, but his eyes are open now. “Coach, we anticipated you pranking us on April Fools, but since practice was off that day, I take it you moved the grand joke.”

Levi looks down at his inferior. “Connie, I'll let you know April Fools was weeks ago.”

I was about to open my mouth to at least try and argue against his plans to leave the position, but I wasn't quick enough. Someone knocks on the door of the sports hall and fucks the party up. Someone none of us was expecting; not me, not even Levi. _Definitely_ not Levi.

The door behind Levi creaks. He doesn't react, his fingers still pressed against his temple like this moment gave him the worst possible headache. Maybe it did. I was almost sure it did.

“If it's number three, someone please repeat everything I said,” Levi says, unmoving. “I _hate_ when you come late. You miss everything.”

A relatively tall man makes his way inside. Silence falls down on everyone who was previously panicking, and we stand straight in our default positions. I narrow my eyes to focus on the newcomer.

He is visibly very lean, toned, but certainly about Levi's age or older. His legs are so long that it looks like they're growing out of his armpits. The entire image put together is very “I listen to Kid Rock and get discount Bud Light” casual and doesn't alert me, but when he comes closer and I get to piece out his face, death literally grips my heart and says: “This will kill you.”

There is no way that this can possibly be happening. But because _so many_ awfully wrong things have been happening to me these past days, I don't doubt it for a second.

This man is Levi's co-star. Levi's dick has been in his mouth.

I cough and look down to hide the raw emotion flashing in my face. Instead, I let Levi know that: “Third's present, coach. Everybody's present.”

“Third here.” Thomas lifts a weak hand.

“Three, ten, sixteen, eleven…” Levi counts while turning around in a snail's pace. “You're all here, who could—”

Levi, it might be _smart_ if you—you know, nevermind! There's not much I'm capable of doing right now, asides from faking a seizure or politely asking NASA to drop a satellite on my head.

Levi's voice cracks on “could”.

“Nile Dawk,” the newcomer says, vaguely amused. “So you hate when I _come_ late. I am incredibly sorry for being so intrusive. It looks like you all had a moment.”

Did he actually just pull a pun, or did I overhear something? Well, good lord, I must be dreaming. When I was about thirteen and told all my suburban area friends that my dream is to be in a room with two porn stars, this is _not_ what I meant.

Levi turns back to us. His eyes blankly focus on the wall behind Jean and he keeps clenching his jaw. His Adam's apple bobs twice. I've never seen him this… _scangry_. It's scared plus angry.

“Dismissed,” he barely grunts. “Practice is off. Go home. _Everyone.”_

None of us moves. We're too intrigued by the other guy, that one man with the ability to intimidate Levi like that. I'm on the edge. Not just because I know who Nile is, not because I saw him gag on Levi's dick or whatever.

Why is this Nile guy even here? Why is Nile's presence so effective? It doesn't look like they're on the best terms. Levi looks like he'd seen a damn ghost—and he's not even looking at Nile anymore. Maybe it's just that the past Levi's been trying to escape came to pay him a visit.

Levi looks straight at me. I realize it only then: he knows. He knows full well I recognize who this new guy is. But I don't move, and I'm sure neither will the rest of the boys.

“Oh—Levi, is this your team?” Nile asks, heading towards us. “Hey, boys! It's nice to meet you all. What's up?”

It gets so silent you could hear Jean _thinking_ if you listened hard enough. I figure I have to say something, solely because I have to live up to my idiot title and break the awkward tension in the room.

“I'm cool, thanks for asking,” I stupidly say and smile.

And because I _knew_ Jean wouldn't pass up on the opportunity, he leans up and says: “We love a friendly queen.”

“We stan,” Connie whispers, fully under Jean's Twitter culture influence.

Nile smiles back at me. I glance at Levi while palming the side of my hip. Never in my life have I seen him that cornered. He looks like he wants to travel back in time and _not_ be the sperm that made it.

I get back to observing Levi's co-star. Nile has a long, square, attractive face. His hair isn’t short; it’s one whole “fuck me up, fam” at the barber's, styled and reaching a bit past his ears. The goatee he’s sporting is thick on the chin, but weaker out to where his jawline meets his ears. His moustache, while quite watery, is still impressive and lends him that exquisite “don't talk back to me” look. If not for his past and my knowledge of it, I'd say he looked like my dad—if my dad were the type of guy to beat his daughter's ex boyfriends up, and wear a shirt that says: “Touch my daughter and I'll touch you.” Speaking of which, no, that would be awful considering the gay porn context.

As none of us proceeds to give out any other answer, Nile pushes his single-strap computer bag higher on his shoulder and crosses his arms. I narrow my eyes. Crossing your arms is a defensive gesture, which would make perfect sense in this setting: he's got twenty-four effectively trained men against him, and one effectively pissed off man giving an attitude. I, for one, would run away. The aura is menacing.

“It's really inconvenient if a whole herd of elites don't talk to their new coach,” Nile jokes. “It's almost like I asked for rose petals to be tossed at my feet everywhere I go.”

The words bring light back in Levi's eyes. He turns his head, glaring at Nile. I notice his hand forms a fist and relaxes a second later. And so on; repeatedly.

“New coach?” Levi repeats. _“You?_ The new coach isn't supposed to arrive for at least a month.”

“Well—I'm here. What, you thought I'm paying a personal visit?”

“I'd anticipate your personal visits more if I was dead,” Levi cooly says.

Oh my _god_. Even Connie whistles. But Nile doesn't look destroyed at the very slightest; even worse, it looks like he's up to the challenge of being dragged through dirt by Levi.

“I'll be done with them soon. We can talk afterwards,” Levi resumes, a lot more grounded now.

“Great. I'll need more time than the weary fifteen minutes you'd give me right now, so… I'll go make coffee.” Nile turns on his heel and sets the strap up higher. Then, he stops. “Okay. This is confusing. Where do I go?”

Levi turns back to us and motions him slitting his own throat with his thumb. “The cabinet, left from the lockers.”

“I get it. But where the hell are the lockers?”

I rise up on my toes. “Middle white door leads to the showers, the door on the right is the lockers. The teacher's cabinet is the brown door, behind the column on the left.”

I have no real justification for that. I just feel like being friendly with Nile could provide a lot of information. Granted, the way Levi is looking at me now would kill other people on sight; he reminds me of the “Adam!” Vine. But since I am so desensitized towards Levi's inherently mean behavior, I sail through unscathed.

Nile turn around; his eyes read friendly. “So, brown door. Thanks,” he says, staring me down far longer than he did Levi. Then, he disappears behind the door I told him was the right one.

“That was so awful,” Jean immediately says. “It was so bad that I think I have to sit down.”

“He looks stoned.”

“Is he really our next frontman?” Someone hits the nail right on its head.

“He is now,” I silently reply.

Levi, of course, hears that. “Shut up,” he says. “I'll have to talk to Pixis.”

I snort. “Well, he's here already, isn't he? And he looks far too cocky to walk away just because you said so. I think he's staying for good, no matter what you—or Pixis, for that matter—have to say.”

Levi presses his lips together and lends me a knowing look.

“So how do you even know this guy, coach?” Jean breaks the painfully innocent question. I've never felt a stronger urge to take his neck in my hands and strangle him.

I look at Levi at the same time he looks at me. We share a split second of eye contact that undoubtedly says: “Not a _word.”_

“We both went to school together,” Levi explains, eyes boring into mine. “Our friendship is a little rusty because of a plethora of disagreements we had. It's not as bad as it might seem. We have...a way with words.”

“It looked like you're about to jab at his face, coach.”

“Don't you all get as cocky as _coach_ Dawk just now,” Levi grins. “It's our last time together, so at least pretend you care that I'm quitting until I step my foot off the property.”

“Well, I don't mean to brag, but I work at Applebee's and get employee discount,” Connie pipes in. “We could all go out and get food. I mean, the whole team.”

We all actively agree on his offer. But party pooper Levi shakes his head and points his thumb back at the teacher's cabinet. “I have trash to take out. And I have to catch Pixis at some point and have a brief talk about this. Letting Nile “take care” of you is complete nonsense.”

He literally does the quote signs in the air, by the way.

How did they end up shooting a porno if they hate each other so much? I've heard revenge sex and make-up sex is deemed the best that exists, but this seems more like “nuclear war” or “planet collision” sex. I understand they were partners at work, but did that last? And is there something more to Nile being our new coach, or am I just blowing things up right now? Would Levi answer if I asked?

We are dismissed about five minutes later. Levi is completely off-track because of Nile’s unexpected arrival. I'm unable to tear my eyes off of the teacher cabinet's door because Nile is leaning against it with a steaming coffee mug; waiting. I find myself uncharacteristically disgusted by his boldness and thrilled by his damn courage to be so all up in Levi's face.

A few boys go back to the lockers to grab their bags and change, including me and Jean. The rest had left theirs outside the lockers, on the benches, without even bothering to change. Plenty of people, eventually, leave along with Connie and his van for their Applebee's get-together. I say I'll join them later; that there's stuff I have to do beforehand. Levi leaves to the cabinet without looking in my direction. He didn't even thank me for keeping my mouth shut. I find that...ungrateful. What a jerk.

I let my bag fall off my shoulder and on the bench. When I figure I have some waiting to do, anyway, I sit down next to it and pull out my phone. There is no WiFi signal here in the hall. It bums me out. But just as I'm about to get up and head to the cafeteria, I overhear something that glues me back down to the bench.

“I have to admit, Levi: your taste is great. You just always get exactly what you want, don't you? And before you deny it: _look_ at yourself and look at _them_. To think you've pieced together this perfect art gallery of your taste—”

“Nile, shut your fucking mouth.”

I freeze at how angry Levi sounds.

There is no one else in the sports hall besides me and two, by all and any standards, relatively attractive gay porn stars, and I get to hear them dishing out each other's secrets right in front of my salad. Oh my god!

I was supposed to go knock and ask for Levi, but eavesdropping is literally such a fantastic option right now; I get to find out all the saucy details without being a fool and asking about them. Despite being perfectly aware that this has no chance of ending well, I fight the few feet to the door and lean against the wall close enough to be able to peek inside.

Nile is sitting on a tiny couch in the furthest corner of the entire cozy cabinet space. The room itself is dark brown and stuffy—but cozy. Nile kicks his legs up on the coffee table in front of him. Levi isn’t in my range of view, but I’m guessing he’s sitting at his work desk behind the door and has both his legs hooked over one armrest of his chair. He sits like that often and does some shit on his phone.

“But am I really that wrong?” Nile inquires.

“Get away from me and my school,” Levi grunts back. “No one wanted you here.”

Nile’s brows lift up. I find it mocking. _“Your_ school? You just quit and the job offer was listed a month ago already. Pixis called me back the same day I sent an e-mail —does no one, _really,_ want me here?”

Levi comes into view. His jacket hangs low on his left shoulder, the empty sleeve flailing around. For a second, it looks like he’s trying to pull it on—but then it slips lower off. “Have as little as the _audacity_ to touch them, Nile. They’re my family. They’re everything I have and care about, and I can’t let you ruin it.”

It momentarily makes my heart ache. I knew he cared, but not...like that? I let my head rest against the wall as my heart hammers in my chest. Because I know Levi so well at this point, I don’t doubt the lengths he would go to keep us under his supervision. He would do just about anything; even if it means violence.

I turn back to the gap and Levi walks out of my sight again.

“Instead of throwing empty threats, stop acting like they'd be your property and start looking for a new job. Or—are you going back? I see you paid off your car. It’s nice, isn’t it? Being able to afford what you never could. It's really sad we meet at a time like this once again. I wish life went easier on you, my friend.”

I watch Levi slowly walk back into view and realize he's just walking in circles.

“First and foremost,” Levi angrily begins, “spare your pity. I don’t need it. I quit because I’m no longer fit for the position, and because I’ve been walking on a _very_ thin line for more than ten years now.”

Nile grins as wide as he can. “Someone found out, huh?”

“It’s there if you look for it.”

“The past really came and bit you in the ass, Levi, and it bit hard.”

“No.” Levi kneels in front of Nile. “You fucking _idiot._ _Your_ mouth is full of _my_ dick in that very video. You coming here puts both of us at risk. It’s not long until you start your recruiting mission and ruin everything I’ve cared for. And—yes, I quit. _Temporarily._ But now that I see you haven’t changed, I know you're not staying here. I'm signing back up for the position. I'm in better favor either way.”

I want to walk inside the cabinet and shake Levi’s hand.

“It's not at all your right to decide where I stay,” Nile dryly says. “Rewind to New York, then maybe. Then, maybe, I really needed you.”

Levi’s fists are balled tight as he stands. “Why would you bring that up?”

“Because it hurts you and I want to see the person I once used to know.”

For some reason, it feels like Levi is going to hit Nile. He does walk up to him, and I flinch in case Levi really lands a nasty right hook. And maybe I adorned the situation with frail innocence too much, but there were no sexual undertones until the very moment Levi's hand _cups_ Nile’s cheek.

Immediate disgust sparks inside of me and I pull off the gap for a second, just to ease the panging guilt in my stomach. I can't believe I'm still watching this shit.

Why...is this driving me crazy, anyway? Is it because I was rooting so hard for Levi, and with the single mention of New York, he suddenly loses his attitude? Or is it just that it’s weird to think they used to have something in between? I don't know how to describe sexual tension, but it stands right there, _right_ between them, and screams for attention.

“New York was a long time ago,” Levi says. His fingers slide down to Nile’s chin, and he preps it up. I watch each touch and notion carefully while my heart seems to be protesting against something. “And you're only pretty from up here, by the way.”

Nile rolls his eyes. “I know, yeah.”

“But you're not coaching my team.”

I’m surprised by how persistent Levi can be.

“Why?” Nile asks.

Levi's fingers grip his jaw with a little more than ease. “I don't want anyone to trust you. It's enough you fucked my life up. You'll ruin most of them as time passes.”

“I didn’t ruin your life, Levi. You chose to listen to me without doing extensive research. In fact, it wasn’t even me you listened to; it was the money,” Nile replies. “These aren’t kids, honey. They’re right about our age when we started out.”

“You disgust me,” Levi says.

“I know. I love it.”

Nile’s lashes flutter for only a second, and I don’t think it's anything worth my attention. Apparently, that was the biggest blowjob implication I'd seen, because Levi's reaction is immediate: he pulls Nile away by his hair for a good few inches.

“We’re in school,” Levi hisses.

“And since when do you mind?”

“Nile, how many times do I have to tell you? I’m in my thirties now. I grew up. I grew out of it and it hurts to see that you still can’t. My role here isn't looking for new bait, unlike you; it's getting ambitious, hard-working people closer to their dream. Like I said, this is now my family. Nile, I'm _over_ it. The porno industry that _you_ know was never my family. I catered to them and I was sabotaged for their profit.”

“But I heard you frequented.”

“I did, last week. I won’t completely quit what will forever be a part of me. However, being in demand, I can choose what I want to do.”

“Well, Keith told me something else.”

Levi stops. It feels like Nile touched on something that wasn’t supposed to be brought up.

“What did Keith tell you?”

“That your results didn’t come up good and that your rates are horrible.”

“My blood tests have never come up bad, so you can shut the fuck up. Keith just wants to keep you away from me.”

“Well, I don’t think so. I’ve heard here and there that you’ve been having problems getting it up for a shoot.”

I almost snort.

“It’s happened a few times. My doctor said I have to stop abusing my penis with aphrodisiacs and my therapist is literally pulling her hair out trying to figure out why my relationship with sex is so awful.”

Nile’s head drops backwards and meets the couch. “Have you finally met someone?”

Levi doesn’t answer and it immediately grinds Nile’s gears to the limit. “Oh, Levi… Are you banging someone from the team? From the look of it, you might be.”

“And what if I was?”

I nearly choke.

Levi retrieves his hand and wipes it down his pants. Nile seems entirely pleased with himself. Too bad I can’t see Levi's face, because I really want to.

“I'd understand your stance perfectly if you indeed were.”

“I don’t sleep with my inferiors,” Levi says—though...not in the most convincing tone.

“They're not minors, so technically, you can. I can't see any other reason why you wish to stay so bad.”

“Being able to doesn’t mean I’ll do it.”

“And what about that pretty boy?”

There is a short pause during which Nile examines Levi’s face. Something tells me things are about to be awful.

“Pretty boy?” Levi repeats. His voice is cold.

“You know who I’m talking about. It’s the one who told me where to go. He has brown hair and an undeniably fantastic dick. What’s his name?”

I hold my breath.

I am the only one on our team with distinctly chocolate brown hair.

Levi looks out the window. “His name is Eren.”

“And are you two—”

“We're not.”

“But would you?”

“Under different circumstance, who knows.”

I pull off the gap to take a deeper breath.

This can’t be fucking real. So what I thought of beforehand was as real as Wholefoods: Levi didn’t mean he’s waiting for me to grow up. What he meant was that, if positions were different, he wouldn’t hesitate approaching me. I’m right, aren’t I? This is what this means. And if he said it like that, all I can think of now is…

No. Stop. It’s not like that. Don’t flatter yourself.

I swallow and turn back to the gap.

“It’s not my jurisdiction to ram people just because of my position,” Levi continues. “No matter how smart, attractive or desirable they are. These people are off-limit to me for clear reasons.”

“So you’re saying this Eren is smart, attractive and desirable?”

“Nile… Please. I can’t talk about this. It’s law.”

“It’s just the two of us,” Nile keeps pushing. “Is he?”

“There’s not a single bad bone in his body. Yes, what’s there not to like and all of that, but he’s out of reach, so I don’t even think about it. I’ve been coaching him for years now, which makes it even more weird.”

“Which makes it even _better_. Give Eren a shot now; you're not his coach anymore. It could get interesting. He looks like a lot of fun.”

Even Levi scoffs at that. “Sure. It’s the straight men who are most fun, isn’t that right? He can’t drink water without spilling it all over his shirt. Look, Nile—I don’t want to be the bad guy here. I'll sign back up for the job tomorrow. And before you ask again: no, I'm not romantically involved with anyone, not from the team, not out the team.”

“But you _just_ left!” Nile explodes. “Pixis won't take you back like that; just because you changed your mind. Elsemore, you're sticking with me for the control time I'm having, after all. You'll have to show me around, print me your schedules, spend leisure time together. You can grab Eren along, if you want.”

My heart heaves every time my name is mentioned.

“Leave Eren out of this,” Levi says, walking over to the window again.

“Fine. But I can still blow you.”

“Stop talking to me like we're fifteen.”

“Why were you avoiding me?”

“Oh, so you care?” Levi bites and leans against his desk. Only his legs are visible. I pay too much attention to them. “You come and go all the time. I'm used to it. I just thought I'd be better off without you completely. And look at that: it worked.”

“In the end, you were the one to disappear. How's Erwin?”

I jolt at the familiar name. _Nile_ knows _Erwin?_

“Erwin is fine.”

“Okay, go on.”

“He's still single, thanks to you.”

Nile grins. “So nothing has changed. Cock size still wrist and up?”

“We don't talk about it.” Levi sounds slightly irritated. “And don’t get _Erwin_ in this, he has nothing to do with you anymore. He’s doing much better now that you’re not in his face, telling him you married the only woman he ever loved. You got everything you wanted. Just leave him alone.”

“Marie felt generous, so I am now a father of three; don’t forget to mention this over coffee. Erwin will be delighted.”

Levi runs his hand over his face.

“Come on,” Nile suddenly pleads. “Have I not riled you up enough to fuck my face? Let me make your day of retirement the best and dirtiest day ever.”

And to my enormous disbelief, _Levi drags his palm across his own junk._ “I'll check the hall,” he says, turns around and heads straight for the door.

I panic.

Backing off as quickly as I can, I try to place my feet flat to keep the rubbery sounds down. I have no idea where to go; the door is too far away and the lockers are—well, fucking _locked!_ That makes the divider column the only safe place to hide behind—that is, if Levi isn’t going to check the showers. How do I know he _is?_ Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck!_ I would've went to the showers and locked myself in a stall, but every single door in this school creaks—and I’m out of time.

I hide behind the column the second he steps outside of the cabinet, hands tucked in the pockets of his jacket. I hold my breath to be sure he can’t hear me and press close to the cold wall that seems to be my only legitimate savior. I feel small, miserable, and certainly not twenty-one.

Levi whistles. He comes into view, walking along the lined benches. Stopping at the pull-up rails, he looks up, tugging on one that is about his face level. He tugs at it, and the wood creaks. He does a few more before backing off. My eyes slide over his figure, then over the rails, until my gaze lands on the bench.

Levi is standing at the one particular bench I sat on earlier, shins pressed against it. I can’t tell from where I am, but I can swear on my life he is staring at the same thing I am.

My gym bag. You know, the one that says “Eren Jaeger, 11” all over it and has an EFUKT patch on.

He is staring down at my bag.

Levi knows I was there. He knows I heard most, if not all of it.

And yet, he takes a step back and resumes his careless whistle. He should've searched for me; it'd make sense to do so, but he didn't. Levi walks back to his earlier whereabouts, pulling his jacket off a foot before the cabinet's door. The moment his jacket is off of his shoulders, the only thing I feel like doing was running away.

So I run. Oh, I _run,_ Forrest, I run! I pick up my bag and make _sure_ the door to the sports hall gets slammed close as loud as it can get.

My body isn’t used to this type of running: the frantic flee-for-your-fucking-life running that makes me run into people and ignore all possible traffic lights for the sake of my own good. Twenty-seven minutes later I'm sitting on the floor in the foyer of my house, back pressed against the wall. My breath hitches between every inhale I make, my heart drills through my chest like a fucking tropical storm, and my legs are completely numb from running without a warm-up

My head is completely empty of thought.

Mom's not home. I have no idea where she is and it doesn't even matter. I take advantage of being alone and jerk off to shed all the tenting emotion and stress. My shit is all over my hands and some drips down my wrist, but I lay still and don't move.

My eyes are glued to the posters on my ceiling as I spend minutes trying to figure out this new feeling in my chest. It's as if someone is trying to wrench something out of me, something like a tide pull or whatever drunk people do to get ice cubes out of the tray. This is the first time in my life that I don't understand what I feel.

It's getting late. Mom might be home in not that long of a while, so that forces me to take a long shower and fetch clean clothes. Being this clean and beautiful, I realize I don't want to do anything besides playing video games and eating. I make steamed potatoes and lock myself up in my room.

I ignore Jean's messages asking me out for a walk and don't check any social media.

I end up masturbating one more time and falling asleep right after.

* * *

I've been ignoring my screaming phone for the past two minutes. I know it's probably a glitchy Twitch notification or someone from the team pulling an all-nighter and complaining about it now when it's a few hours until class. It might also be my alarm clock on silent.

I lie in bed and ignore it. Due to all this recent horror, I don’t even want to go to school anymore.

My phone beeps again.

I crack one eye open. “You really need to stop,” I say to it.

It beeps in response.

I blindly stretch my hand out and pat over my mattress. Another annoying beep follows, and I open both my eyes. I finally locate my phone squeezed under my thigh and unlock it while scratching at the imprint it left.

All that makes sense is that Mikasa requires my immediate attention at—let me check—oh, fucking _seven_ in the morning! The only message I really read is “EREN IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT” before pressing the call button. I sit up, slow and sleepy, and scratch my bare shoulder. There is signal, but she doesn’t pick up, and so it seems that this has just been a campaign by Jean™ to get me up and running.

 _“Eren! Hi,”_ Mikasa breathlessly picks up.

It startles me. “You better need me to run for president or something. It’s _seven.”_

_“Do you think I could stay at your place for some time?”_

That completely shoves me off-track.

“What? Where are you?” I ask, already peeling my blanket off me. I hear a muffled sound; or sniffling. “Mikasa, can you just answer me? Where are you?”

_“I’m right by the kebab booth you said you hate.”_

“Okay. Can you come over?”

_“I don't remember where you live.”_

Explaining what busses to take is too overwhelming for seven in the morning. “Do you have anything on yourself?"

_“Two backpacks and my bike. The rest is at school.”_

“Any money?”

 _“About five dollars. Do you have a car?”_ Mikasa then asks.

I make a face. “Do I _look_ like someone who has a car?”

Mikasa is silent for a second. _“I know your mom has a car.”_

She knows what she's talking about. I can picture her grinning through this whole sad situation solely because _me_ driving _my mom's_ Sedan is probably the most abstract and homosexuality-implying action to ever execute. I’m not going to touch the Sedan. The salon _reeks_ of Estée Lauder’s “Bronze Goddess” and coconut air freshener — and that would almost be bearable, if the car’s audio system wasn’t broken by the USB flash mom once jammed into it with no possible way of getting it out. The _only_ music that _ever_ plays upon ignition is Bollywood movie soundtracks.

So, yeah: a cherry red 2006 Renault X84 II Megane Sedan? That car, Mikasa? The spirit of Indian film industry?

“I'm not driving that thing,” I reply. “And dad doesn't let me drive the old Subaru, so, no. I can't. I can't pick you up. And I most definitely would miss class if I did.”

_“Eren, please! Don't be a jerk, not right now. I know I woke you up and you're pissed, but—”_

I start coughing. Once I’m done, she resumes.

_“—but you—”_

And I cough again. “Look, honey. Why don't you call Jean? Mikasa, my relationship with that car is awful. I can't even leave for groceries. I need _dry cleaning_ after it, full-body. Just laundry service and bleach all over. It stinks like a mom with high salary and cheap Claire’s lip gloss. Which is literally accurate, by the way.”

Mikasa doesn’t react to that.

 _“And_ Fa deodorant that says “Island Vibes” all over it,” I add.

She sighs. I pull my phone back from my ear and check the time. It’s 7:16 AM.

Oh, you know what? Fuck it. Class starts at nine. I'll skip, even though I'm perfectly able to make it. It’s the whole thing yesterday that really riled me up, so it’s just for the better that I stay home.

“Fine,” I drag. “I'll go downstairs and ask for the keys.”

_“Thank you.”_

_“If_ mom's awake.”

_“Thank you so much, Eren.”_

I rush to end the phone call to get over it.

My phone slides down between my legs. I rub my face. It seems to me that Mikasa’s parents finally took on the toll to kick her out. Goes without saying I’ll let her stay, otherwise Erwin would call me _unethical._

I go at my ribs and briefly think about Levi again. I should show up. That would be a (as Erwin would say) _rational_ thing to do. But then I decide I won’t fuck my mood up by going to college to stare at Levi's white car outside the window, thinking about his life and all this stuff he's been up to. I wonder if he’s mad at me or not. Then I drop the thought and stretch because I don’t exactly care, anyway.

It wouldn't hurt anyone if I put pants on, since roaming around in my dad's old t-shirt and black boxers doesn’t quite fit what I’m about to do. Honestly, I don’t really feel like busting out and driving across town to pick Mikasa up, but I feel some surging righteousness within me. We have the guest room free and I can't imagine how dreadfully enlarged our living cost might be to just get a little extra groceries.

Fuck. I have to wear pants.

I pee before brushing my teeth and getting dressed. I end up not changing my shirt and just pulling on a pair of socks and sweatpants, and all that alone asks ten minutes of my life. I spend too much time doing things I don't enjoy.

Shit. That sounds like something Levi would say.

With my phone sliding around in my left pocket and five bucks crumpling in the other, I make my way downstairs to the kitchen, which is, by the way, just about _drenched_ in an awfully good smell. I notice mom at the counter and smile for a split second.

By the way, it's literally seven o'clock. In the AM.

“Morning,” I greet her. “Smells great. You're cooking?”

“There's something stuck in the dishwasher so I'm draining it down with hot water,” she replies. “Probably your old sloppy joes. You never rinse anything before popping it in.”

“Why would we need a dishwasher if we have to wash the dishes before putting them in?” I lazily open the fridge. “God. Are we ever getting fucking rid of the beans?”

“I doubt that.”

I slam the fridge close.

It's a bummer I plan to skip class today. I’d be royally fucked if she found out through the Levi>Erwin>mother chain—which she _definitely_ will, anyway, so—whatever! How can Levi trust me with pornography if I can't trust him with my college attendance?

I feel guilty. The Saturday breakfast talk seems fruitless now, and whatever this wild rebellion I’m doing now is, it’s nowhere near complimenting my promise to start keeping up with school more. Though I do have to admit, I've never went through this much dramatic shit all at once, so you've got to cut me some slack.

Mom pulls off her rubber gloves and throws them on the counter besides the sink. She rubs her hands together, fixes her hair so it doesn’t fall in front of her eyes, and finally heads to the fridge to open it. I peek over her head to indifferently scan the contents again.

“Can I take the keys today?”

“Mine or dad's?”

“Preferably his.”

“I can drop you off at school if Jean's not picking you up. I have a meeting in town later on. When do your classes start? Nine, or something?”

“It's not really about school. I have to pick Mikasa up.”

Mom turns to me and gives me the hardest stare ever. I try not to squirm and shrink in front of her. Expression unreadable, she turns back to the fridge. “I see.”

That doesn’t sound good at all.

“I'll bring her here with me, if that’s fine. She needs a place to stay for some time.”

“Honey, she can stay for as long as she wants. I’m glad you finally found someone.”

I squint. Then I open my mouth, inhale and hold my breath, and then squint a little _harder._

“Are you—” I begin and cut myself off. “Oh, _no,_ mom. It's not like that.”

“Well, congratulations, you secretive man.” Mom reaches up for a new carton of eggs and bacon. “It’s alright. It's been a long time since I've heard you mention a girl.”

“Yes. It’s because I _don't_ like Mikasa. At least not like you think I do.”

“It's okay if you do,” she goes on. “She's a really nice girl, Eren.”

“I don't like her.”

“Why not?”

I don’t reply and press my hip against the counter as I lean on it. Mom gets a fork and a bowl. Then, as if stung by a jellyfish in the Pacific, she freezes as if realizing something, places both items down and turns to me. I patiently hold her stare.

“No, I’m not gay,” I say before she even asks. “It's just like you and Ryan Gosling. You know he’s out there looking good, but you don’t date him.”

“That’s because Ryan Gosling is just too much.”

“I still can't get over my last girlfriend, so don't talk about getting another one. I don't want another WW2-sized heartbreak.”

Mom stares at me for a while before breaking into a smile, and punches my shoulder. “Grey looks good on you,” she mentions. “Is this your dad's?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” I say. “I never wear grey.”

“Is it because of Mikasa?”

I roll my eyes. “No.”

She cracks four eggs in the bowl and starts whisking them. Then she stops. “Should I count her in?”

“I don't know. Let me text her.”

“You have her number?”

“Yes. Unlike back when _you_ were a teenager, people these days obtain each other's phone numbers within the first ten minutes of conversation.”

That said, I pull out my phone to text her about the eggs. She responds positive.

“She'll eat,” I say. “And I really have to go, she's waiting.”

“Well, don't make her wait! The Subaru keys are on the counter and mine are in my purse, I think.”

I go straight to the counter because I'm not going to dig through her purse. Her purse is for a fact even worse than her car.

The flat surface is splattered in papers and old paychecks from the last two weeks. I see pencils, pens, hair clips, perfume, sticky notes, my beanie, mom's scarf, my scarf, a few cents and four mint candies. Briefly: anything but the keys. I don't know what I expected; this is _our_ house, after all. You wouldn't find a whale in here.

“Could they be somewhere else?” I ask over my shoulder.

“I think it's out of gas, anyway. Why don't you take my car? I filled up last night.”

“I...can't drive automatic transmission.”

“The Subaru has automatic transmission, too.”

“No, it's different. And Mikasa has a bike. It won't fit it in your car.”

“It will if you tilt the back seats down. There's plenty of space. Really, just take my car.”

Her sudden defense catches my attention. I pause and lean on the counter. “Mom? Is there a _specific_ reason you don't want me to take dad's car?”

I hear her pour the eggs on the pan and rinse the bowl. She comes out of the kitchen and stands straight in the doorway. Her hands are crossed. Read: this stance is defensive. Nile stood the same way yesterday.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” mom says. “I'm just telling you it's out of gas.”

“And?”

“I don't know where the keys are.”

 _“And?”_ My voice becomes skeptical.

She looks down as her arms fall to her sides. “Don't go to the garage.”

“Why?”

“Just don't.”

So she did something to the car and doesn't want me to see it; how _mom_ of her. I just hope she hasn't sold it.

“I'm telling dad,” I immediately say.

“It's not the car. I didn't do anything to the car, it's the... _garage_ you shouldn't see.”

“Oh, no. What did you do to the garage, mom?” I ask, excited, already on my way to see the damage done.

“I fucking drove straight into the wall, Eren,” she finally admits with another sad and sinful: “Fucking straight into it.”

The entire wall the Subaru is facing looks like a huge web. The center damage point is exactly down at the car's bumper and spreads upwards from there. The cracks reach the ceiling, even. A few chunks of the wall have fallen; mostly on the front window.

It figures why none of us has used the car ever since dad left.

“Mom.”

“I know.”

I turn to her, unamused. _“Mom.”_

“That was an accident, okay? My car was at service and I was parking in the garage with the Subaru. I tried leaning forward to see how much space is left there, and it seemed enough, so I pressed the pedal. But this car is weird and stiff. It wasn't moving—so I hit it harder.”

I jolt out into laughter.

“I'm still telling dad, you know,” I utter after calming down.

“Eren, this isn't funny.”

“How is this _not_ funny? You drove into the _wall.”_ I have to laugh at that one more time. “Oh my god.”

Her mouth crooks. “Laugh all you want, but it's still out of gas. I wasn't lying about that.”

* * *

My eyes are slanted as fuck, and I just—oh my _god._

I suddenly get stuck at every red light, and every single one of them lasts for just about ever. “Chalo Dildar Chalo” is dimmed down by the engine while I drive, but it maxes out in volume whenever I press on the brakes. I can't even count how many times I've started slapping the entire stereo system just to turn it off. In the end, I just went with it and promised myself I'd get dad's toolbox and tear the whole thing out the second I get home.

I have come to conclude one thing about myself: a three hour loop of Indian love songs isn't really my thing.

I pull over in the lot next to the kebab booth and flick the key around immediately. This area isn't loud and I don't want to disturb people. Banging out to Bollywood music at seven in the morning has to be left to more adventurous people than me. So instead, my hand reaches down to the tray besides the gearshift, and I dig through mom's papers, lip glosses and hand sanitizers to find my phone and text Mikasa.

Next to the closed kebab booth is a coffee shop. There are three bikes locked in front of it. One of them is a mint green beach bike for someone whimsical and vintage, the second one is a red sports bike whose frame gives it away, and the third one is so damn dirty I can only tell it's customized from the wide tires.

The door of the cafe swings open and Mikasa heads to my car without doubting for a second it's mine. Her hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail, face unreadable and a little pale. Her eyes are puffy. She's been crying. The only clothes she has on (considering how cold it is) is a black t-shirt and gym shorts. She has two bags, exactly like she told me she would.

I throw a peace sign through the window, to which she replies with the same thing.

The muddy bike was—of _course_ —Mikasa's. I get out to help her stuff it inside the back seat, along with her bags.

We get in the car together and sit in silence for a while. It feels unnecessary to say anything sassy about the dirty bike now that I'm doing her the favor of a lifetime. I decide on being nice over rude.

“So, hi,” I say.

“Hey, yourself.” Mikasa finally smiles. “You look good for eight in the morning.”

“You too.”

“But I've been crying for two hours straight.”

“Like that changes anything.”

She brushes the left side of her face and hides her smile. I find it quite cute.

“Listen. I know you're hungry and probably tired, so we can head home. I'm skipping today. It's not that important. I just want to help you settle down and everything.”

“That's—”

“Yes, you can kiss me later. I'll start the engine now. You check if the road is clear, okay?”

“Wait, what?” Mikasa instinctively fastens her seat belt. “Why?”

“The stereo system is kind of very much broken and this music will shatter your sense of sound. It gets silent if I reach about 30 miles per hour as quickly as possible.”

“Is it dubstep?”

“Don't you dare say a bad thing about dubstep. I was raised by Skrillex. Ready?”

“As I can be.”

I turn the key. The song that was playing when I pulled over resumes in the same horrible volume as ever. Mikasa jumps in her seat and covers her ears with her palms.

“Check the lane, Mikasa!” I yell over the music. My fingers grip the wheel so hard my knuckles go white, and I quickly look over my shoulder to search for any incoming traffic. This is _normally_ a silent street, but it's just my bad luck to have five cars driving past.

Mikasa turns around in her seat and checks the back window. Her bike is pretty much in the way for me to see anything. Two cars shoot past. I get really impatient and upset knowing that, when I go to heaven, god will check the soundtrack of my life, see that the majority of it is Drake, Fetty Wap and Bollywood music, and reject me.

“Okay, we're clear!” Mikasa yells.

I hit the pedal harder than I beat my dick, ladies and gentlemen.

The Sedan roars and the volume of the music drops. We both relax in our seats. I slow down a little to avoid an accidental speeding ticket and wipe my palms on my sweatpants one by one. Mikasa, next to me, rubs her forehead and doesn't say anything.

Then, she finally tilts her head back. “That was so dramatic.”

“I fucking hate this car.”

“It smells a little.”

“I know.”

I jam my fingers on every button of the AC to clear up the air. The car stops smelling of perfume and lip gloss about two minutes later. It takes me ten minutes to get out of the urban area of the town. During these twelve long minutes, I try to think of anything that could work as a conversation starter. A “meaningful” conversation starter full of “beautiful revelations”. Nothing comes to mind.

“How are we going to tell Carla?” Mikasa speaks up so I don't have to.

“I already told her,” I lie. I mean, I did. But I think Mikasa is staying for way longer than mom thinks she is.

“Oh. That's great.”

That's it. The next time we speak is a while later, when we're already closing in to my house. I keep looking at her, acting like I'm staring out the window. She seems distanced and very odd this morning. I look at her arms and bare legs, and notice that she's pressing every limb she has close to herself.

“Are you cold?” I ask and reach out to turn the AC down.

“No.”

“You've got goosebumps.”

She looks at her left arm. “That's nothing. It's fine.”

I turn back to the road. I could be generous to the very end. Girls like this motive. They live and breathe for it. “You can take my hoodie. You're sitting on it,” I shyly murmur.

Mikasa moves a little and pulls on a red sleeve. “This?”

“Yeah. You can have it. Like, forever. Just take it.”

She does. I'm glad I could get rid of it; my ex gave it to me on my birthday a year ago. I've owned it a year too long. It's currently the best I can do for Mikasa, and the best I can do for myself.

“It smells so nice!” Mikasa lifts the hoodie to bury her face in it. “It smells so _manly._ Like your deodorant and cologne, and...the outdoors. Wow, you smell really good, Eren.”

“Mikasa… That's embarrassing.”

“I'm sorry. I love it.”

“I'm glad.”

I peek at her once in a while until we get home. She's awfully nice, that girl. I'll consider what mom said about her. I can't figure in what sense, but I do like her a lot.

After we get home, a long conversation with mom ensues. The two drink at least three cups of green tea over extremely R-rated language about Mikasa's parents and rent cost in Wildwood. Meanwhile, I fix mom's shower head, since Mikasa will be sharing the bathroom with her, and get some unnecessary things out of the guest room to free space for our new family member.

By the time I should be getting lunch at school, I'm helping Mikasa settle in her new room. I also go out for a jog, work out in my room aided by Gorillaz, meet Jean after class and copy shit from his notebook. I spend the rest of the day tidying up the garage. And, the cherry on top: I fix my mom's stereo system.

The three of us watch Sex in the City in the evening. I find the show completely hilarious and fail to see how I haven't been hooked on it since I was born. By the end of the night, when Love Island starts airing, I leave them on the couch because I can feel myself nodding off and go to my room so I can fall in bed and die. I feel emotionally drained and only now seem to realize my legs hurt more than ever from all the running I did yesterday.

Having another “family member” actually seems fun. Maybe it's just for the time being, but I still feel comfortable with the idea of having an older sister. I'd always wanted a sister. Mom definitely seems to adore her and already treats her better than she ever treated me.

My pocket vibrates and I clumsily plunge my hand down. My lock screen shows Instagram notifications and two new unread WhatsApp messages from Jean, but my iMessage icon shows nine— _oh._ Oh, what is _this?_

I squint just to make sure I'm, in fact, seeing this.

 **[8:57 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Why are you skipping class? If this is related to anything I said, wow, you're being...weird._

 **[8:59 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Are you afraid?_

 **[9:01 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Look… I hate to be doing this, but I'm not going to touch you. I don't know what's going on in your head after you heard_

 **[9:01 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Well_

 **[9:01 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _All of it, I guess?_

 **[9:02 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _So just please attend class and don't let yourself pivot on the fact that I did/do porn. This shouldn't mean or change anything._

 **[9:04 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _And don't ghost me, for the love of god. Life is already fucking me so hard that I doubt I ever wish to do porn again. I know this sounds awful, but there's little people I trust, and you're one of them. For the better or worse._

 **[9:07 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _I'm not very good with texting._

 **[9:07 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _I'd like to talk, up-front. Preferably tonight._

My heart dies.

I stare at the screen and read it all over and over again in disbelief that he actually, _literally,_ picked up his phone and not only double, not even _triple,_ he _nonuple_ texted me. Levi has my number and I have his for completely understandable purposes, but this isn't one of them.

I'm suddenly not sure whether I should reply, or call, or ignore him, so I sit patiently and stare at the screen. Three dots pop up. I stress out over it, but don't lock my phone.

 **[9:18 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Not that we both don't have an iPhone and I can't see the "Read" receipt_

 **[9:18 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _But I made myself clear, I think?_

I quickly type one out.

 **[9:18 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _Ahdsjhkhladj sorry I've been doing things_

 **[9:19 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _It's just that like_

 **[9:19 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _Why on earth would you text me fam it's like 9 pm I'm supposed to be asleep or watching peppa pig. Or both_

 **[9:19 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _In fact goodnight_

 **[9:19 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _This whole situation has stressed me out enough and I am convinced I now have at least one (1) grey hair on my head :-D_

 **[9:20 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _:-D is this a penis? That is so uncultured_

 **[9:20 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _Levi its...oh my god you own an iphone and don't know what emojis are_

 **[9:20 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _It's like a smiling dude_

 **[9:20 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _Turn yo dam phone sideways_

 **[9:21 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _I :-D got :-D it :-D_

 **[9:21 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _Using emojis ironically is 2009 and you are so dusty_

I realize he's been looking for me at school today. I also figure he's assumed I'm going through some moral trauma because of whatever he thought I might've seen or heard from his and Nile's conversation. Thoughtful, but very aloof! Why text me at nine in the evening, on a Tuesday night? I have a feeling he isn't mad at me, but if that really were the case, he could've waited until practice tomorrow. So I conclude: he's drinking.

 **[9:23 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Can you do me a favor?_

I swallow.

Favor?

I take a deep breath and hold my phone up, thinking. I type my reply out.

 **[9:23 PM, Tuesday] Me:** _What am I in for?_

 **[9:23 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Be at the sports hall in fifteen minutes._

My stomach does that weird thing where it feels like it's doing a banging somersault. I sit up in bed and reread the message. He sends two more a short while later.

 **[9:23 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _Please._

 **[9:23 PM, Tuesday] Coach:** _:-D_


	5. nostalgia, ULTRA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me as [@gazastrippin](https://gazastrippin.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!
> 
> Listen to the official [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/hentaivert/playlist/6yPFlwS4GGLAsIm4Rg8u0v?si=U7HuR0j0RX-MN13SLLlVaA) that will make you miss the ex you don't have!

I dress in jeans under one quite specific circumstance: dates. So whatever god is trying to tell me as I'm pulling on my only pair of jeans to meet Levi, I feel like I would sleep better at night if I didn't know of it.

This isn't going to be a date. It's going to be emotional torment where Levi lectures me on what's good and bad in life, just like my dad did years ago when he found out I've been playing porno games on our family's shared computer. “Normal” soccer coaches don't ask their students to come over to the sports hall at nine in the evening on a Tuesday night. This is just a big, red flag.

But point still stands: I'm wearing jeans. I change my dad's shirt to my white Sunbather one and spend far too much time trying to make my hair look less greasy. Finally I tell myself swooping it to one side or the other isn't going to make it any cleaner, so I pop my head in the sink and literally rub a _bar of Dove soap_ all over it because I'm out of fucking shampoo. Yes, I hit my head against the tap, yes, it feels like I have a brain aneurysm—fuck, yes, I'm _really_ _overcompensating_ [BASS BOOSTED]. Do I regret it? Yes. Would I do it again? Probably.

I almost catch on fire from the speed I dry my hair in. It all begins with a towel that I just rub like my life depends on it, and then I cave in and go get my mom's blow dryer. It's loud and hot, and it seems that every setting I try makes it even louder and hotter, so in the end I give up and endure my scalp burning just to get my hair dry.

What my mom has failed to let me know after all these years is that the texture of my hair isn't friends with dry bar soap or blow dryers, _or_ both at the same time. I might have her father's thick, rich Armenian locks, but I also have her own mother’s genetic programming to be stupid.

After that whole Frank’s Adventure, I stand in front of the mirror with my hair sticking up in every fucking direction, wishing mom swallowed me rather than letting dad bust a nut inside her. It still manages to look greasy. Finally I decide that it’s easier to pretend that this is my new look rather than pulling a comb through my hair, so I get my backpack from my room and try to slide down the stair rail as silently as I can. Mom and Mikasa are in the living room watching TV, so I should be good to go.

Getting off the rail, I—of course, of _course_ —just _barely_ brush my leg past my mom’s fig tree pot, and one of the green figs bounces off the ground with a fat, meaty slap. I lash out to get it before it makes its way downtown, but kick it even further as I squat. The stupid thing rolls right through the foyer and into the living room.

There is remarkable silence before I hear Mikasa say: “Oh my god, Carla.”

And immediately after, follows mom’s: “It’s my son. He beats that fig tree up all the time.”

I stop inches before the living room, eyes shut in complete resentment of having legs this long, and having legs at all. “I barely touched it,” I call from behind the corner.

“You roundhouse kicked it about five times last week. Are you going out?”

I walk over to the couch they’re sitting on. For a second, I consider explaining the entire situation to mom, but imagine how awkward that could end up being.

“Maybe. Not for long,” I say, unsure, because Levi never told me what he needs me for. “I'll get beer and stuff.”

Mikasa leans on the back of the couch and winces. “Oh. Wow. What happened to your hair?”

“I don’t know.”

“It looks disgusting.”

“Okay.”

Mom turns to look at me as well and seems appalled. “Oh, honey,” she says to Mikasa, “he’s had plenty of bad fashion eras. You should’ve seen him when he dyed his tips black.”

“I am going to throw up,” I immediately say.

“Didn't you say you're dead tired?” Mikasa asks. “Or did you just say that so you wouldn’t have to come down with us and watch TV?”

“I can't sleep. I'll just bike to the park and be back in around an hour or something.”

“Isn’t your bike broken?”

“Well, I’ll just take yours.”

She turns back to the TV. “Sure.”

Mom also turns to the TV and they both continue watching some crestfallen erotic movie without paying much attention to me. Which, I think, is great, so I walk back to the foyer and start looking for the Subaru’s keys. I find them in mom's grey coat, the inner pocket, along with some paychecks, change and hairpins.

I want to check how much gas is left. Maybe there's enough for me to get to the closest gas station so I don’t have to pull up on the meeting with Mikasa’s dirty bike and sweaty armpits. Generally arriving places with a bicycle isn’t a good look unless you work at a coffee shop and your coworkers listen exclusively to Yellow Days and Grimes.

I get in the car parked next to mom's Sedan, fasten my seatbelt and push the key in the ignition, all while already pulling out my phone to text Levi and let him know I’m finally heading over. The Subaru purrs. I sink in the leather seat and finish writing the message while the door of the garage goes up. A loud clink tells me I’m good to go, so I drop my phone on my lap and put it in reverse to back out on our driveway.

The fuel bar burns red, but I can totally manage to make it. I’ve driven places low on gas millions of times.

I back up for a few inches. The trunk barely stuffs its nose out of the garage and the car goes dead and stops. Confused, I turn the key again, but the same thing happens: purr, the motor runs and dies. The next time I try it, the car doesn’t even purr, that stupid gas slut, it just growls upon ignition.

Exasperated, I let my forehead drop against the steering wheel, and the car honks.

I jerk in my seat like I was born just yesterday and hit my elbow against the door handle. My phone drops from my lap down to the pedals and my heart is going all out of rhythm. I definitely got the short end of the stick in life.

The door to the garage flies open and mom stares at me with Mikasa ghosting behind. Sometimes I forget that being a soccer team’s captain doesn’t mean I can avoid having a Turkish mother and how she’s going to beat my ass to a different form of sentience.

“God, Eren,” Mikasa says. “You scared your mom.”

“Do we have any gas?” I ask, getting out of the car.

“No, and I _literally_ already—“ Mom almost begins her “you’re awful” chant, but Mikasa pushes next to her and stares me down.

“Oh my god, wait. He’s wearing…” Mikasa faintly begins.

Mom, _of course,_ finishes: “Jeans.”

“I can’t believe I’m seeing this.”

I look down at my pants. No one says anything. I awkwardly stand by the car and Mikasa sits down on the steps, letting her chin rest on her hands.

“He's having a date,” mom importantly concludes.

Mikasa just nods.

“Wow. Now that’s great. I’m having a _date,”_ I say and put my hands on my knees because life be 2 difficult, and because my body little, my soul heavy. “For the record, I had no idea. I’m gonna jot this down in my planner _immediately.”_

“Oh, come on. You in jeans is the golden precedent of a date because it means you’re trying,” Mikasa explains.

“How is wearing pants trying?”

“You said you're going _biking,_ by the way. With my _bike_.”

I ignore her. “Is it still in the back?”

“Unless you’ve touched it with your grimy jean-wearing hands.”

They both keep staring at me while I get the bike out of the Sedan’s trunk. I get unnecessarily hot and bothered, and stressed, on top of that, as if meeting Levi under such intimate conditions wasn’t enough. I’m mad I didn’t get the car, and I’m mad that I’m now conspired against, like some love-deluded macho. I literally haven’t _touched_ a girl in a _year._ I barely look at them anymore.

I stare outside for a while, holding the bike by my thighs and trying to manage my bodily functions. I realize only now that I forgot to use deodorant in the rush of things, but it’s too late now. Whether or not the two are still by the door, I have my back turned on them.

“Wow, his ass really is fat,” I hear Mikasa say. “Boy, you stupid thick.”

I stick my butt out without turning around. “It’s dumb thick, get cultured.”

“These jeans are too tight for wherever you’re going.”

“No,” I reply. “I wore them in high school.”

“You should’ve stopped wearing them in high school.”

“I didn’t ask to be roasted like this? I come here looking edible, and you attack me. Just let me go have a good time.”

“A good time on a Tuesday night?” Mikasa asks. “What are you, in all honesty, going to do? Please do tell.”

“If it really shakes your whole world: yes, I’m meeting someone.”

“And that’s beer at the park,” mom winds. “That’s it. I’m going inside. This movie on TV outweighs your hormonal decisions about a million times.”

“Mom, it’s soft porn you’re watching.”

“The jeans you’re wearing are soft porn,” she says, and disappears back into the house.

Mikasa and I are left alone. I stand at an awkward distance while she sits, and we’re just looking at each other. I turn to her and lift my shirt to look down at the popping dickprint I never knew these jeans offered.

Finally, she waves her hands around in a puzzled manner. “So?”

“How are my pants bad? I don’t understand,” I cave in.

“I think it’s just that everyone is so used to seeing you in sweatpants your dick sticking out seems wrong.”

“Should I go change?”

“No,” she immediately says. “Don’t do that. You look hot.”

“Alright.” I thankfully sigh. “I have to get going. I’m already severely late and too ugly for this hour.”

Mikasa doesn’t move from the steps and jerks her toes around. I must mention, she is wearing fake Gucci slides about three sizes too big. “Yeah, okay. I just—I kind of want a cigarette. Do you have any?”

“I don’t smoke. Besides, _ew_ —since when do _you?”_

“Dunno, cut me slack.”

“Should I bring you some from the gas station? You’re dead broke, I feel my fatherly instincts crawling out of my stone cold heart.”

She smiles. “Marlboro Purple Burst.”

“I can’t even pronounce that.”

“It’s like mall-borough.”

“Mall-borough. What burst?”

“Purple.”

I throw my leg over Mikasa’s bike and press the remote on my key ring to open the gate. Slowly, unwillingly, I roll down our driveway, but pull at the brakes when I hear Mikasa’s Gucci slides scrape the pavement.

“If I hear one more ass comment, no mall-boroughs for Ms. Thirsty.”

“Are you really seeing someone?”

I look over my shoulder. “I don’t like the fact that you sound concerned.”

“I just feel like I should know who outranked me, you know?” She says, suddenly looking mad childish in my basketball shorts, tube socks and sweater with the logo of a college my mom dropped out of about twenty years ago to have me.

“That’s not even—that’s literally out of the question.” I sound confused even to myself. “I’m just going out to have a breather. On god. No girl rivalry up in this bitch. I be single and not ready to mingle.”

“Really?”

“Shit, yeah. You two seem to forget that having acne on your chin proves to be the most effective form of birth control.”

“You don’t have acne on your chin.”

I roll backwards with the bike, closer to where Mikasa is standing, and turn my other cheek towards her. “Look.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“It’s just dark. But I had a real nasty breakout this morning and I _picked_ at it.”

“You disgust me. Put toothpaste on it next time.”

“Thanks. I won’t.”

I cycle for seventeen minutes straight and don’t even check my phone to see if Levi would’ve potentially flaked out. It would award me '#1 Idiot' if I survived the entire garage hassle just to arrive at school and read a 'nvm stay in'-esque text from Levi.

It feels weird to be here when it's dark. The parking lot lanterns are all on, bugs buzzing around the lamps, getting stoned on electricity. The second I turn on the corner, my already stifled breath goes buck wild at the sight of Levi’s car and I press on the brakes. And for the love of god, they creak. It makes me feel funny knowing he's here, and wonder for how long already.

There are no parking racks for bikes next to the sports hall, so I shamelessly leave Mikasa’s bike against Levi's car. I don’t lock it because I can’t think of anyone who would want to steal a dirty bike at 10 PM.

Levi’s car isn’t even parked like I was taught in driver’s ed. I would say it’s only parked in the sense that it doesn’t move and the engine is off.

“It’s that kind of a day, alright?” Levi says from somewhere behind.

I turn around. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

I stand still while he scales me in dim lantern light. It feels weird that he looks at me as a person that just got here to see him for conversation, not practice or formation scheduling, and I’m beginning to get the feeling that Levi thinks the same thing.

I awkwardly clear my throat. “Don’t look for any redeeming qualities. I don’t have any.”

“I know.”

Cue: questionable thoughts.

_EXT. STREET – NIGHT_

_EREN stands still next to LEVI’S car, feet planted on the ground. His JEANS seem incredibly snug on his HIPS and definitely graze his SKIN after all the fuck biking he just did in SCENE #32. EREN’S hand rests on the bike’s frame, posture spelling out the words: “I WANT TO GO HOME.” His chin acne is rather apparent under the lamppost. Light wind swats hair around his face where it doesn’t stick to his sweaty skin. His cheeks are tinted pink, again, from all the fuck biking in SCENE #32._

_EREN_

_I’m gonna leave the bike here, if that’s cool._

_ANGLE ON LEVI. Standing still with a swinging key ring poking out of the front pocket of his dark wash jeans, LEVI is no longer looking at EREN. He is now looking somewhere to the side and seems completely collected. Compared to EREN, sweat hasn’t stained his back and forehead, which surely doesn’t help EREN’S shattering confidence._

_LEVI_

_Yeah, sure._

_LEVI takes a deep breath and kicks at the ground. Pebbles speak volumes. B/G MUSIC: “Cricket Symphony” by England’s Cricket Orchestra._

This is awkward and I never asked for it. I stop looking straight at him and check out his car so it doesn’t look like I _literally_ only came here to see him, which, oh my god, I _did,_ and it hadn’t even dawned upon me until now.

“I thought your car was a Chrysler?” I ask.

“It's a Grand Cherokee,” Levi replies.

“I was convinced it was a Chrysler.”

“It's a Grand Cherokee.”

I decide it’s going to be better for everyone if I just don’t speak ever again.

It occurred to me several times while biking that maybe Levi's going to mess with me and _I'll_ end up being the one breaking and leaving town. It's possible. It’s astounding how violently intelligent (violent _and_ intelligent) he can be sometimes. And sometimes I spend at least twenty minutes wondering at which point in life did his IQ reach a state so fragile he decided doing porn was going to make him an it girl.

And I hate that it’s been a reoccurring thought. We are in such a weird situation. It’s never been me and him before—just him and the team. There was never anything between us that couldn’t be discussed with anyone else in the world.

“What are you thinking about?” Levi asks, throwing me out of it.

I hesitate. “Nothing.”

“But I can hear you thinking.”

“I have _two_ brain cells. The sound you’re hearing is them repeatedly colliding to produce something funny to say.”

Levi snorts. “Well, they’ve done it. How long does it take for the next funny thing?”

“About five years,” I say. “I don’t know. I'm just—I’m just, like, thinking—or, like, wondering why I came. That took me a while to formulate, I don’t know why.”

“Probably because I asked you to come,” Levi says, and then shrugs. “But you can go home if you want to, this isn’t anything that can’t wait.”

“It’s good you let me know it wasn’t urgent now that I’m already here.” I wipe my hands down my jeans and plant them above my knees, finally feeling comfortable enough to breathe heavier after the biking. “Whew, boy. Seventeen minutes of biking and I can feel my chakras align.”

“And you’re not even sweating,” he comments.

I take a deep breath and hold it.

“Okay. You look petrified now.”

“Am I the bad sweaty or the normal sweaty?” I ask, standing up straight.

He squints. “You're… _just_ sweaty.”

“Well, no, it don’t work like that. Normal sweaty is when you look like you had to catch a bus, and then you get on it, slick your hair back and stand by the pole to wind down.”

“And bad sweaty?”

“It’s when you spend seventeen minutes biking at high speed to hold a conversation about various stages of being sweaty.”

I grin when I see him offer me a dosed, but amused smile.

I never admit this, but talking to Levi is very easy. He’s thirty, but by no means looks a day over twenty-three—or sounds that part when talking. He grew up in New York, man. Because he spends so much time around our team, he’s unwillingly picked up the whole Twitter slang, and it’s just comedy gold to see a completely business-oriented man buried in paperwork to say, in reply to me complaining about sit-ups: “Then perish.”

I tilt my head back to crack my neck and roll my shoulders with it. “So calling me over was—“ I begin, but shut up in an instant when something makes one of my two brain cells combust.

Ever since I found 006 and heard what he had to say to Nile, it's been gyrating in my brain. It’s an understatement that I’m qualified as attractive by both of them, but is it that slight of a chance that this was a bootycall?

I shift my weight to one foot. “Yes. Anyway.”

“What?” He huffs, half-smiling in confusion.

“No, nothing, I forgot what I was about to say.”

“You biked here wearing jeans?” Levi suddenly changes the topic. “Why would you do that to yourself?”

“Why is it so apparent to _everyone_ that I’m wearing _denim_ _pants?”_ I whisper, lifting my hands to my temples.

Levi’s hard stare flickers down now that my shirt has popped up and goes bug eyed.

I lower my arms. The shirt goes back down.

Levi quite comically avoids looking at me, holding back laughter by pressing his lips together.

“What is it?” I ask. “What _is it?”_

“It’s funny.”

“What is?”

“Nothing,” Levi mimics my sin, “I forgot what I was about to say.”

I deadpan him. “You know, you’re not my superior after 9 PM, so I’m legally allowed to strangle you for pulling that move. I regret teaching you Internet vocabulary, too.”

“What, you regret me calling Connie a thot?”

A fairly unattractive snort escapes me before I can tell myself it’s going to destroy my authoritative stance. “Oh my god. No. I could never.” And then my muscles involuntarily jerk. “Are we heading in?”

“Oh, right. I can’t have you falling feverish before season,” he murmurs, back to being old and important. “We can go to the cabinet.”

“I thought you had to hand the keys over.”

“I’m still here for the control period, like you probably _overheard._ But you’re right, I’m supposed to give them to Nile. Surely I won’t. Nile has no idea I have to give him the keys or the journal—or anything.”

“What a power move.”

He gets visibly gloomier. “It doesn't matter much. He’ll pry his way into this.”

“Wait, so you think Nile is only here to get people into porn?” I ask. “That sounds absurd. Who would do that?”

“Wouldn’t you do that if you got paid for it?”

“Okay, fair. Actually—very fair. I would. And I can’t wait for you to call me out on it now.” I then lower my voice to imitate what he said before I popped the porn cherry: “You don’t understand how the world works. You don’t judge people for what they do for a living.”

“God, shut up, Eren. I don't always mean what I say,” Levi sincerely says. “I throw things around a lot. Don’t take it to heart. Considering what I’ve done for a living, you should be obligated to judge me.”

I can tell that he means it from the way he casts his stare down. Over these past years of being coached by him, I got around to knowing what’s two plus two. Levi contradicts himself a lot, because he’s trying to be good influence to us, but life tends to get in the way and put him in a situation where being nice isn’t an option. If he could opt out of coaching during those times, he would, but it’s a position where it’s just not possible. So he can be mean, and he can also be incredibly kind. The latter is so rare that I almost feel touched. Well—I _do_ feel touched, don’t get me wrong, but don’t want this to feel too #deep.

I shiver. “O-K. You are still unlovable and it’s cold.”

“We can go inside.”

“We _should_ go inside.”

We head to the backdoor of the hall while Levi pats at his pockets to find the key ring. He swipes through different keys then, looking for the right one. Because it’s dark, I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight so that fool sees what he’s doing.

“You know,” I begin, watching him press on the door with his shoulder. “In all honesty, I thought you were going to beat me up.”

He flashes a quick glare in my direction. “What?”

“I mean, after all the passive-aggressive messages,” I hurry to explain, “I was so sure that you would stab me under the name of god.”

Levi looks back down at the lock and pulls the handle again. It still doesn’t budge. “I get carried away when I drink…” His voice falls faint. “It’s normal. Don’t brain it. If you’ve heard any about Plutchik’s wheel, I’ve landed on red.”

“So you’re drinking,” I conclude—as if how talkative he is wouldn’t give it away.

“It’s just Hennessey.”

 _“Just_ Hennessey.”

“I called Nile and swore to murder him about twenty minutes ago.”

“I hope you drove here sober, at least.”

“Maybe.”

“Oh my _god._ You are a _trainwreck.”_ I lean against the door, same as him. “What’s that wheel you mentioned?”

“Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. I learned about it in counseling.”

“What counseling?”

Levi sighs. “Okay, I lied. Therapy. Counseling just sounds chic.”

Immediately I recall his and Nile’s conversation and imagine Levi trying to explain to his therapist how porn has ruined the excitement of intimacy, and how he can’t get his dick up, and how love is fake—and feel my cheeks burn. It surprises me more than anything ever has: the secondhand embarrassment. I never thought of myself as emphatic.

“Was it really like you said?” I silently ask. “The test results, and… You know.”

“You can say it out loud. It’s nothing new to either of us,” Levi… _teases._ He knows his second nature is my completely uncharted territory.

I can’t talk about it like that. I can’t just say “penis” in everyday conversation. It’s not decent and the word “penis” has the same energy as the word “chunky”: unsettling, disgusting, full of gravely undertones that curse the conversation immediately.

Cheeks hot, I mumble: “Maybe it’s better I don’t know.”

I have executed the opposite of a power move. Levi stops working on getting the door open and instead leans against it. “What, you can’t talk about erectile dysfunction?”

“Not with you. It’s weird.”

“Touchy subject?” He presses.

I cast my stare down at the pavement. “Well—no.” How do I casually say I’m a virgin? I feel somehow compelled to. It would be very American Pie of me.

Levi has to have a degree in body language. He brings his hand to his cheek. “Oh.”

Looks like I don’t even have to put it in words. “Yeah.”

“You’ve never…”

“Nope. And I know you heard Jean shout “Eren ate pussy” about two years ago—that was true. And embarrassing,” I add. “But it’s just never felt… I don’t know. Right? It’s weird. I never really wanted… I don’t know.”

“You were scared and didn’t feel like anyone was right?” Levi guesses.

“Yeah. Well, yeah, kind of.” I pause and pick at my chin. “I mean, that’s why I never plan on telling anyone that you do porn. Not even Jean could keep his mouth shut that I didn’t actually sleep with anyone at his house party, so I don’t want to be that kind of a dick to someone else. It’s just—it’s your career. Both are your careers. If what you said about coaching to Nile was genuine, you have my word.”

I can’t believe I just #rambled.

“Okay, Virgin Mary. You have my trust,” he says, scoffs, and shakes his head.

It’s suddenly awfully silent. But despite the fact that I did, indeed, #ramble, it’s not uncomfortable silence. We just stand facing each other, looking at each other, and I can feel that the title “BONDING.COM” should appear somewhere in Comic Sans font. Eventually it weighs over me that we’re likely about to discuss the sex life I never had—me, someone who has idolized Levi for a big chunk of his teenage years, and Levi, the fucking big brother trope extraordinaire, who has seen me go through puberty, endured band, health goth, rich teen and innumerable rapper phases, watched me cry, break, sprain and bruise my limbs—and it suddenly feels stupid and comical and intimate, so I break eye contact, look to the side and fake a cough.

“You know what?” Levi begins, starting to work on the door again. It eases the atmosphere. “I’m going to tell you something you won’t hear often.”

I’m ready to be mocked for saving myself for marriage or having a small dick.

“You’re not missing out,” he plainly states.

I look back at him. “I was ready to be mocked for saving myself for marriage or having a small dick. Or being gay.”

Levi side-eyes me. “None of mentioned are bad things.”

“These just seem like the first anyone would launch at me.”

He stands still, eyes staring blankly at the lock. It drags on for quite a moment.

It’s not every day a porn star tells you sex isn’t anything special. It’s probably a one-in-a-million kind of thing, and it’s happening to me right now.

“Virginity is a made up concept,” Levi slowly says, eyes glassy, focused on the lock. “I know it sounds liberal and new age. It’s stupid. But don’t pander to it just because people _make_ it look like a societal norm. You’ll get to it. When the time is right, you’ll know.”

“And what if it’s in fifty years? Have you ever seen the movie—”

“Then it’s in fifty years,” he interrupts, looking up at me. “Then it’s in fifty years. I don’t—I’m sure you were fed the birds and the bees years ago. If not, you had the Internet growing up, and I don’t want to be _that_ person anyway. But just trust me when I say checking it off your list won’t make you feel any better. It won’t change you. It’s not an awakening. Figuratively, it’s no different than going skiing for the first time.”

I snort. “Was skiing really the best comparison you could think of?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Actually, my initial question was whether you’d kill me if given the chance, before we moved on to all that.”

“Yes.”

I suck in a quick breath. “Fucking superb.”

The lock gives up and Levi yanks at the door for the last time. The heavy creak reverberates through the hall, and the smell of floor cleaner washes over us. Light draught from the open windows pull through my hair as I step inside. Nobody uses this exit unless it’s summer. We always march through the school in uniforms just to take the main exit and show off.

I rub my hands against my thighs in joy because it’s warmer in here.

Levi has taken the jacket off and left it hanging on his shoulder. It suddenly dawns upon me that I haven’t been taking our group chat’s “Levi is a protein shake slut” myth seriously.

“Did you die?” Levi silently asks.

Once again, the question completely throws me off. I had my brain running on autopilot. “What do you mean?”

“You’re awfully quiet.”

Yeah, because this whole thing is _new_ and _idk_ how to cope. My brain short circuits. “Sorry. Uh—“ But nothing comes to mind.

I clear my throat—for the millionth time—and step back to close the door while he walks ahead. The door isolates the hall from the crickets and poor light shed from the lampposts, so we both stand in silence and complete darkness. I can see where Levi is standing because of his white shirt, but I can’t see any detail. Everything is velvety and soft, and weirdly serene.

“I have to pee,” I whisper.

Levi laughs—genuinely. “Go ahead. I'll make my way to the cabinet…somehow.”

“Please don’t die, coach. I need my career.”

His shadowy figure flips around and walks straight into the dark. I figure that’s where the cabinet is, so the showers should be a little to the right. Pinning down my destination, I start walking.

“Okay… Okay. Levi? I can’t see.”

“Get your flashlight, technology baby.”

“No. Turn the lights on.” I stretch my hand out to avoid running into something. There should've been a column in front of me. “It’s not that long of a walk for me to whip out my flashlight.”

“I can’t turn the lights on. Your eyes will get used to it.”

“Goodness gracious, you moron, I have to _urinate,”_ I tastefully say. “I understand that your eyes have adapted to the darkness because you were born before Thomas Edison, but please, for the love of Despacito, flick that light switch. If we get caught, you’re deaf and I don’t speak English.”

“By etiquette, it’s not just women you can’t call old,” Levi replies.

“I only implied that you were old.”

“Have fun destroying your ankles.”

“You’re late for the party. I destroyed my ankles taking hits from my Razor scooter a long time ago.”

I keep patting the wall until I find the column and squeeze my way in the showers. It smells morbidly like cheese and bleach, which must be the weirdest combination of smells I have ever inhaled.

I turn on the lights and watch the lamps flicker on one by one. It’s blatantly terrifying in the white shower room setting. There is a row of urinals on the left, a row of sinks and mirrors on the right, and the rest of the tiled room is filled with stalls until the back wall. There, it takes a turn that leads to the showers. I am convinced Slenderman is about to bust out with his mixtape just any second now.

I close the door behind myself and walk up to the closest urinal, pull my zipper and melt into a warm, close-eyed smile.

The speakers scratch.

I uncomfortably shuffle and look up at the far corner of the room. The tiny speaker makes a sound again.

“Today, on Fox News,” Levi’s voice cuts through.

I freeze, dick in hand, unsure what to do.

“What on earth…” I murmur to myself. “Levi, don’t you have better things to do during menopause?”

“Not really. I prefer to watch people pee.”

I sit in my knees, tuck myself back in my jeans and screech.

“Shut up, I can’t even see you. These are security cameras and they only cover the sinks. We had to install them and it cost us about as much as my salary.”

“That doesn't change anything. There are mirrors by the sinks—mirrors _reflect_ things.”

“You've seen me have sex.”

“You do have a point,” I admit. “But it’s there with your full consent. My dick can’t consent to anything because it can’t speak. Yet. I’ve been trying to teach it some ASL lately.”

Levi literally explodes through the speakers, and faintly whispers after recovering that he’ll turn it off.

Then we’re silent for a while. I know he hasn't turned anything off, because there's still faint buzzing and static clicking.

“Why aren't you peeing?” Levi asks, dragging the “why” out.

“You're still watching.”

“I'm not.”

“How on earth would you know I'm not peeing if you’re not watching?”

“I closed my eyes. You just have to trust me on this.”

“I’ve never heard anything more fake than that. I’m taking a stall.” I head over to the furthest one and unzip my pants once again.

The only audible sound is the clicking of his microphone. Levi clears his throat. I nervously resume peeing and try to hit the bowl so it makes as little noise as possible. It fails, so I flush and use the sound as a little escapade.

This doesn’t make sense. It's really happening, isn't it? It’s like a weird season of Seinfeld, but fleshed out as my life, and doused in skater culture throughout. If you asked me a month ago if I had ever imagined peeing in school at 10 PM on a Tuesday night, talking to Levi through the speakers with the knowledge that he does gay porn, I would probably look at you and tell you to seek help.

“Levi?” I call out.

“Yes?”

“What’s your zodiac sign?”

“Capricorn. You?”

“I’m Aries.”

“I’m scared of you.”

I pee in silence, wondering what’s so awful about being an Aries.

“Levi?” I speak up again.

“Yes?”

“How old were you?”

“When I what?”

I finish and tuck myself back in my pants. “When you started doing porn and all of that.”

“Why would you ask me something this intimate right now?”

I sit down on the lid of the toilet and press my feet against the door. The soles of my shoes lie flat and don’t slide down. I sit there like that. “Because that’s what you texted me. Because… You trust me. Like you said.”

“I had planned this out a bit differently.”

“So you’ve been thinking about it?” I ask, genuinely surprised. “I can head over if that’s what you want. I bet talking to me through the speakers wasn’t part of your plan.”

“It's just a lot easier to talk to you when I don't have to look at you,” he murmurs so that I barely piece it together. “You don’t treat me much different knowing what I do, and it's—“

“Great?” I try.

“Terrifying,” Levi finishes. “So I regret making you come over. But something makes me think that it can’t possibly get worse anyway.”

“Thanks,” I say, feeling slighted.

Levi stays silent.

“Just gonna let you know: I’ve been in this bitch for a minute.”

He sighs. “You can come here.”

On my way to the exit, I glance sideways at every mirror and conclude that these jeans, really, are condescending.

Levi sits on the chair in his authentic pose and fiddles a microphone in his hands. He squints while watching me try comb through my matted hair with my fingers.

“Your hair looks…different,” he then chooses to comment.

“I washed it with bar soap because I didn’t want to pull up with greasy hair,” I confess. “I don’t have any shampoo and I need to go to the mall to get deodorant, and I actually think I need to get a dress shirt, too.”

“I don’t know why you thought I should know any of that, but thank you.”

“I don’t know why I had to see you nut inside Nile, but I’m not rubbing that in your face.”

Levi snorts again. “No one made you watch that.”

“I was coerced to by my two brain cells.” I sit down on the small couch where Nile, possibly, blew Levi, and suddenly feel uncomfortable. Commenting on it seems unnecessary, so I just mirror his pose, throwing my legs over the armrests as well. It also feels unnecessary to mention that I ollied the fuck out of 006: UNCUT before anything went down; it’s almost tempting to let Levi think I watched the whole thing.“You told me you wanted to talk.”

“I just wanted to cover some base knowledge.”

“On what?”

“Porn. I don't know.” He shrugs. “Well, yeah, porn, I guess.”

I make a face. “Because…?”

Levi puts the microphone back on the table and entwines his fingers over his stomach. He sits like that for a second, just observing my fading grimace. “If I do quit, I’m sure we’ll stay in touch regarding championships, schedules, hotel bookings and everything with it.”

“I’m not white _or_ smart. Please leave the thinking to Jean.”

“You're the captain,” Levi simply states. “That’s what you have to do.”

“So does it automatically mean I have to know porn history?”

“No.”

I swallow. “Aren't you going to ask me if I _want_ to hear anything about it?”

“Do you want to hear about it?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Good,” Levi says. “I'll start with the workload.”

I sink way back in the soft chair as my stomach stirs. “Levi—I _really_ don't think I need to know this. It's…personal stuff.” And I mean it. Getting into porn can’t be something you decide on when waking up on a Saturday.

He looks up to the ceiling, his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and closes his eyes. “You don't need it, but I want you to know.”

“Why?”

The answer he provides is beyond my expectation.

“I just _want_ to.” He says this in one whole breath, sounding almost desperate to be heard. “I want someone, for once in my life, to understand that pornography doesn’t have to be what it looks like. I don't want you to think I'm a bad person. I don't want you to see me as an unsympathetic, perverted extremist clown of the adult industry. We’re on professional terms under legal and normative acts, but you’re one of the rare few people to be in my life for more than a month. You’ve been here for years. We know each other more than we think we do. You don’t know what it means to me to finally feel like there is someone to trust.”

I don’t notice that I’m squeezing my phone in my hands so hard that my knuckles have gone white.

“This whole thing has been misunderstood for decades. I’ve been through fucking peril with nearly no one to share it with. Sex work is indecent behavior between the hard working nine-to-five Christian community in Wildwood, it’s completely veto in school and absurd to most dating app people. The ones that don’t mind are the ones who think my experience in sex is an advantage and that working with porn means I’ll rail them _high class_ in their fucking two-room apartment. And now _you_ come along.” Levi looks over at me; _me,_ stupid and scared, with my arms pressed tight to myself, shoulders riding up. “Some overtly straight college student who is somehow completely rational about all of this. How does that work?”

After blankly staring, I realize it’s my turn to talk. I swallow dry. There have to be some expected sympathy guidelines that I have to check off. Like, “I’m so sorry”, “you should’ve had a choice”, “life gets better”. But instead I say: “For one, I’m gonna risk it and guess you are absolutely and _mindlessly_ drunk.”

“I am,” he silently says.

“Okay. Yeet. That was… That was a lot in under two minutes.” I sit up and fix the folds of my shirt. “I don’t know where you got the impression, but I never thought you were a bad person. It’s not like I saw you on Pornhub and went: that’s him and he has to die. It was more like pure shock to see you so act so animate and…gay.”

Levi quickly rubs at his left eye. “Bisexual.”

“Yes, sure, how could I have known. Look, I feel so stupid right now. I literally don’t know what to say to you because none of this feels real to me. I think it’s just that—I don’t know, you can confide in me because I’ve been exposed to more extreme shit on the Internet than just guys being dudes. And it’s probably my depression washing the colors out of it. I think that if it were Jean, he would’ve died from heart palpitation or too beat dick syndrome.”

“I feel like Jean is the type of person that puts balsamic vinegar on their salad and calls it risky,” Levi comments.

“You’re so right. He drinks pre-workout and juuls at the same time. I love this concept. It’s heavy New York energy.”

“Wait—is Juul that stupid USB plug vape the sophomore guy passed out from?”

“Yup.”

“Condescending,” Levi breathily states.

“Bitches these days will do anything for clout,” I add to his statement, knowing all well he doesn’t know what “clout” is, but that he’ll never show it. “But—umm. About what you said: I think what you do, whatever you do, is fine. You’re a cool, funky dude, and I like you as a person. My mom didn’t raise a quitter. She raised a depressed pussy with tolerance for alcohol and new things.”

Levi snorts and covers half of his face with his hand, then runs it through his hair. “This is surprisingly refreshing.”

“Did it go like you planned, grand schemer?”

“Not at all.”

“Is it better?”

“It’s better.”

I beam. “See, this is what I’m talking about. You’re good to be around, fa— _god_ , I almost used Internet slang.”

He peeks at me through the gap between his pinky and ring fingers. “Say it.”

 _“Fam.”_ And then I sink way lower in the couch and cover my face with my forearms. Everything is embarrassing and 2 much, and I don’t know what to think, feel, do or say, so I just lie like this and click my tongue.

“Thank you,” I hear Levi say. “I mean it. Thank you.”

“No problem, man,” I murmur. My ears have gotten warm.

“I should mention Nile didn't blow me, if you thought that’s what went down back then.”

I peek from under my arms. “It’s fine if he did. It’s just a bee-jay.”

Levi rubs his face and his fingers linger on his lips, pulling them down by the corners. His nails dig into the soft skin. “Nnno,” he drags the word out. “Nothing happened.”

“I’m sorry I ruined it.”

“I don’t think anything would’ve happened either way. Whatever we had going on is long gone and I don’t find sexual stimulation that necessary lately.” Then he crosses his arms and pulls them tight to his chest. “I had a weird feeling you were back there, just not that you’d be listening. I was hoping to walk out and meet you so I had an excuse to talk to him elsewhere.”

“So you didn’t get your dick sucked because I was doing pull-ups in the back,” I summarize and laugh. “God, I have to _jot_ this _down.”_

“You could say that, yeah,” he smiles to himself and closes his eyes. “I'll throw you off a building for that. Oh, before I forget—I’m staying the night here. I don’t want to go home. You're free to talk to me until I pass out. The keys are where I left them.”

“And where is that?”

He cracks one eye open, thinking. Then, closes it. “Absurdly enough, I actually think they’re in my back pocket.”

“Fantastic. Give them to me.”

Levi lifts his ass up from the chair, fishes the keys and tosses them on the desk.

“Is it peak drunk hours?” I ask after a moment of silence during which I factually come to believe Levi has fallen asleep. 

But alas—eyes closed, he pulls out a bottle of Hennessy from the bottom drawer and lifts for me to see. In all certainty, this is not a bottle that can be called full, or even half full.

“I would die after drinking that.”

“I'm surprised I didn't call you and scream into the receiver,” Levi whispers and drapes his forearm over his eyes. “Can you just talk to me right now? Tell me about your day. Tell me about your worries. Tell me about Carla.”

“Why me? Turn the radio on and listen to a podcast.”

“The only thing I got is a tape coach Rico uses in aerobics and a CD coach Hanji uses in fat blaster cardio.”

“So let’s have it,” I say.

“Rico or Hanji?”

“Rico.”

He presses one (1) button on the radio. Lose My Breath by Destiny’s Child plays—I know it because I was shaking my little butt to it as a kid when mom did workouts in front of the TV. He turns it off right away.

“My sense of sound is in a fragile state after all the screaming I received on the phone,” Levi admits. “No, talk to me. You have laughably soothing intonation and I miss kicking back and listening to someone talk.”

“Erwin once said things I say are ‘digestible’.”

“Erwin isn’t digestible,” he murmurs against his hand.

The thought of Erwin brings back a question I was dying to ask earlier. “Nile said you frequented. What does that mean? Did you film something?”

“Yeah.” But no explanation or further discussion.

“Oh. Okay.”

Something inside me bubbles. It’s either the anger or the gluten allergy, taken Mikasa and I had takeout and takeout is always so dubious.

The following two hours I talk to my heart’s limit while Levi is undoubtedly already sleeping. I talk about the girls that broke my heart, the cars I'd like to drive and possibly own, my family, school, friends, dead pets, shows I’ve been to, things I’ve done that I regret, things that hurt me and things that make me happy. I tell him about how dad and I went on a roadtrip to see Red Hot Chili Peppers and sink in every little detail about it: the temporary tattoos, the wild, heartfelt freedom I felt hanging out the windows, the gallons of lemon iced tea I had, how he held me on his shoulders so I could see how old Anthony Kiedis has gotten, how we drove back home listening to Childish Gambino… I talk about my mom. I talk about how she paints. About how she makes me do things I hate, how I do them despite hating them, how she pecks me on the cheek and rises on her toes to pull me close by my head and press her cheek against mine, saying: “Honey, don’t do the pout.” And I always _do_ the pout, and she _loves_ it.

By the end of my storytelling, after seemingly all that can be said is said, I find myself in a state of emotion I just can’t fucking pertain. I can’t shake the feelings that built up while I was talking. The fact that Levi considers me trustworthy, and that he wants to hear about the mundane and trivial things in my life, and that what is going on right now feels almost like friendship—it’s all so new to me. And while I would normally just get that bitch arms wide open, I can’t help but feel way off. I don’t know what to do with new people anymore. My chest tingles in excitement one second, and fear of fucking it up the next.

Next layer: the nostalgia. It’s awful. I can't fight it. At times it's outright impossible to fight, so I have to face it. This always happens back at Veteran's park, where Annie and I spent so much time together. It's all the places I connect memories and people to. But I do have to say one thing: thank _fuck_ I've learned how to battle nostalgia. I know it’s how my mind soothes and repairs itself, but it’s not always healthy. Nostalgia isn't romantic, despite everything you're trying to tell yourself.

Next layer: the sentiment. After I'm done talking, I sit still on the couch, watching him sleep. Poor guy. He's got more on his plate than he can eat. I don't feel sorry for him because it honestly looks like he's handling everything well, but I do worry his career path has made him an outcast. It's already so hard to have friends when you hit thirty. And then, the longer I sit there, the more I do begin to feel sorry. What has to happen for someone like Levi to trust someone like me? The end of the fucking world? 

Before leaving, I carefully pick up his jacket and put it on top of him.

Next layer: the pain.

I barge in my room at two AM, obviously having forgotten whatever kind of mall-boroughs I was meant to buy. The dusky smell of the cabinet and coffee is still in my hair and clothes. Ingrained.

I lie still in bed for a long time. I don’t know how long. I only get up to close the window when I grow annoyed by a car alarm going off a mile away. And since I got up, I peel myself out of my clothes, staying in boxers, fall back in bed and entwine my fingers on my stomach just like Levi did in the cabinet.

Why did I open up? I hope he was asleep. It would be awful for him to know that behind this meme Hypebeast connoisseur hides a sentimental little boy who can’t get over his ex, his parents' failed marriage and the inevitable 'grownup' life he's so outright scared of.

I throw myself around the bed for hours, somehow sure Levi wasn’t really asleep. Hugging my pillow, I lie awake until my morning alarm.


	6. all_saints_-_pure_shores.mp3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me as [@gazastrippin](https://gazastrippin.tumblr.com) on Tumblr!
> 
> Listen to the official [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/hentaivert/playlist/6yPFlwS4GGLAsIm4Rg8u0v?si=U7HuR0j0RX-MN13SLLlVaA) while sadly gazing out the car window as your mom drives you to the grocery store!

I have a formidable amount of Mikasa’s chunky peanut butter and rice crackers for breakfast at exactly six in the morning and it leaves me catatonic.

I chase my ‘breakfast’ down with orange juice while staring out the window like a stoned college dropout. Somehow my mind keeps reeling back to everything that happened at night, and the more I think about it, the weirder it feels. Not that it was bad. It was different. It was kind of…genuine. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been the one talking so much without 80% of my monologues consisting of adlibs and Vine echoes. I even brought up my parents’ marriage and spending the majority of my life without a father figure, and everything.

 _Not_ sure how genuine this is to Levi! Maybe he’s having a thunderstorm-sized crisis and just needed company, and now we’ll never talk like that again, whatever ‘like that’ means anyway. Drinking half a bottle of Hennessey on a Tuesday night would make  _me_ buy an impromptu ticked to Las Vegas, rob a convenience store naked and ring the Pope, but Levi just texted me, like, nine times, so I figure that’s a thirty-year-old’s sense of ‘extreme’. But I decide not to stress it.

‘I decide not to stress it’ quite literally means I spend the following hour sitting in the kitchen—in red boxers and GOLF socks—and actively stressing it. I think that this could probably be fixed by splurging on unnecessary AliExpress purchases, but I’ll put that sinful child labor urge behind me.

Delving quite deep in thought while picking my nose, I barely notice the door behind me creak. I freak and turn around to see Mikasa in a crop top that says ‘1996, BRAZIL’. That is about all she’s wearing because the light blue panties don’t count, being practically sheer. We both freeze, and a part of me literally decays in the blink of an eye. I quickly look away. My cheeks feel hot. Please— _help me._

 _“Good_ morning!” I say, in a very reserved way. “Goodgoodgood morning.”

“What the hell are you doing being up this early?” Mikasa asks. Her voice is sleepy and hoarse.

I try to look over my shoulder and be a useful conversation partner, but catch a glimpse of her thighs and whip right back around. “Meditating.”

“Is this your first time seeing a woman?” She opens the fridge. “I want eggs.”

“We haven’t been shopping.”

“Did you take my PB? It’s like half empty.”

“No.”

“No—what?”

“I didn’t take your peanut butter,” I say, tonguing at a peanut chunk stuck between my teeth. “Stop walking around the house naked.”

“I didn’t know you’d be up,” she says behind me; and the next second, she slides on the chair next to me, kicking her feet up on the windowsill. In her hands she holds mango yogurt. “I would’ve put pants on, since you’re still in primary school.”

My eyes head right away from the yogurt and to her slender waist and faint creases where her body folds from sitting. She must have perfect fat deposition since it all goes to her thighs and none sits on the belly. The curly lace edge of her panties ends in a small ribbon bow, and because they sit so low on her hips, the hem doesn’t cover a small line of trimmed pubic hair.

Her  _belly button_ is pierced. What kind of low-budget porn intro is this? All of it stirs long buried emotion in me, but I know—or at least try to tell myself—that it’s only circumstantial. I don’t have feelings for her, for some reason; some bizarre fucking reason. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I find her attractive, but I can’t imagine us dating. It must be the belly button thing.

I put my hand on my face and sigh. “I can’t do this.”

“It’s okay.”

“Why do you look like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I am going to die. This is going to be extremely unhealthy for my psyche.  _Stop_ that.” I straighten back up and snatch the yogurt from Mikasa’s hands (along with the spoon she was just about to lick). “You can’t do that.”

“I’m just trying to pop my pussy. Anyway—” she reaches up and takes the yogurt back from my weary hands— “I thought you had class at ten.”

“You can’t pop your pussy in this house, Mikasa.”

“I can and I will. I thought you had class at ten,” she tenderly repeats. “Why are you exuding big dick energy at this hour?”

“Why pop pussy at this hour?”

Mikasa scratches her nose and her left knee right after. “I wanted to have eggs and then go for a run. My class is at nine thirty. I don’t think I’ve slept enough for how long today is looking. Did you get my cigarettes? Puffing a fat one after coffee would absolutely save my day.”

“Oh…” I slide lower on the chair. “You’re gonna kill me.”

“You didn’t?” She asks in disbelief. “I trusted you. This is…national treason. But considering the hour you got home, I guess it figures: you’re a dumb slut and god frowns upon you, you heathen. How was it?”

“Oh my  _god.”_ I lean against the desk, chair tilted back. “You literally slingshot yourself to conclusions. My soccer coach is going through it, sis. Lay off. I had to go see him before he did something wildly stupid.”

“You’re so…straight,” she says. “Okay, fine! But you owe me a lift.”

“That’s cool. I was convinced it would be something worse.”

“Like eating my pussy?”

“I’m sorry,  _what?”_

“I take forever to orgasm.”

“Why are you like that?”

“I don’t know. Sexual liberty came to me at a young age,” Mikasa admits, and keeps eating her yogurt. “But knock on my door if you ever feel like it. Except next weekend. I’ll be ovulating.”

“I’ll just walk myself out now.”

Our first practice with Nile, just like Mikasa’s peanut butter, leaves me catatonic.

He’s a qualified personal trainer; we find that out five minutes in, with him waving his certificate around, explaining to us that soccer players shouldn’t bulk and how he almost wrote a thesis on that. Nile pulls me in front as a prime example of what we  _don’t_ have to look like, and it embarrasses me that Levi is just sitting on the bench and laughing. I make a face mocking him, but my cheeks are busted red in anger. Connie is presented as perfect with his 21.5 BMI.

During practice, I try to tell Jean that, since I'm tall and fit, I can afford to be at a BMI of 25.9. High muscle mass can list me as overweight in the BMI system. Jean, however, tells me I have to stop eating kebab. Have you ever heard anything worse than ‘stop eating kebab’? I dispute. Who would I be without a greasy, hearty, traditional meal?

Levi and I only exchange knowing stares. Nothing other than a fleeting ‘hey’ when I jog to the showers, but I feel like that is already so much.

* * *

Yet again, Jean’s 3 AM group chat breakdown classifies as ‘over caffeinated, could not find the right porno or dealing with two inch root regrowth’. Or all at once! To prove it, let me pull the receipts:

**[3:02 AM, Saturday] Jean:** _hey slut whats the point of doing anything if we’re all gonna die? like why do we have love and materialistic belongings if we’re just a dust particle in the grand scheme of things and it will all mean nothing after we die_

**[3:03 AM, Saturday] Jean:** _idk_

**[3:03 AM, Saturday] Jean:** _i just got second in a very intense fortnite match_

**[3:04 AM, Saturday] Jean:** _im kinda just depressed_

**[3:04 AM, Saturday] Jean:** _i fully intend to abandon my everyday life and move to the beaches of southern canada to pursue my life long dream of becoming a female hermit crab. PERIODT!!!!!!!_

To which I can say: me. But then Marco feels the need to pipe in and go:

**[3:11 AM, Saturday] Marco:** _Lmfaooo jean U trippin!!_

**[3:11 AM, Saturday] Marco:** _Im boutta go zero waste which is like no nut november cuz you not wasting any dick on hoes_

**[3:12 AM, Saturday] Me:** _Marco_

**[3:12 AM, Saturday] Me:** _Die_

Erwin calls at a more decent hour in the morning and announces he got me a meeting with Armin at Starbucks today. He calls me again five minutes later and asks if I need a ride to school. I feel very awkward to be reminding him it’s Saturday.

If I thought practice on Wednesday left me sobbing, then yesterday must have beat it by a million. I tried to be productive after practice and do my kinesiology presentation early so I don’t have to postpone it until an hour before class. I usually lean back in my chair and manspread—but because of Nile’s ruthless regime, I had to squat like a fucking frog.

I was on the phone with Jean while skating to Starbucks, and we couldn’t stop whining about how sore unexpected parts of our bodies were. I feel my inner thighs like I've never felt them before, so every block gives my legs some big ass skeevies. Jean said he couldn’t lift his arms up and that he had to wriggle into his shirt ‘like a YouTube video of a snake shedding, but in reverse’.

This neighborhood I’m passing through is cozy and crazy costly. They've got the white panel houses and picket fences, pools, flamingoes and gnomes.  _Why_ do white people put gnomes in their yards? Mom always said it’s to make kids behave, but holy shit, if your children stick to ethic values because of a dusty porcelain dwarf figurine, you need counseling.

I turn left, swerve because of my loose wheels, and almost get hit by a minivan and a cyclist—at the  _same_ time—when passing a lingerie store.

My town is the perfect crackhead replica of East Beach, Los Santos from GTA: San Andreas. San Andreas is a factually unbeatable piece of work that, along with Tyler, The Creator, kind of put together my entire childhood. Sticky notes of cheat code lists, the forever ingrained ‘HESOYAM’ and ‘RIPAZHA’, the memorable intro music, get the fuck out! I love that game. What an #iconic step for mankind.

Since skating is no longer allowed at the mall because the POC-friendly cops either retired or got busted for marijuana possession and mall management put dents in the rails, I hop off Baker, my beloved four-wheeled partner, and tuck him behind my backpack.

The mall used to be a ‘spot’ a few years ago. Teenagers settle on mediocre places and identify them as ‘spots’. I prefer the word ‘clubhouse’ because it just sounds incomparably more chic. My whole skater squad decided our clubhouse is going to be the rusty basin in the middle of the mall, surrounded by brown beanbags that smell like some kid peed in them—like ball pits have been smelling since ball pits were invented. Back then, the stairs still had fine rails we could slide on, and Papa John’s was definitely serving better pizza than now (but that might just be my progressing celiac). My bruised shins were worth it; those were the best summers of my life. I know, I know, the grass was greener, the sky was…bluer. Spare me! I’m  _sentimental!_

I never come to Starbucks. Coffee literally makes me fucking scream. My metabolism always rebukes against my will and makes me shit after five seconds of consuming bean juice— _but,_ of course, as it goes with everyone’s lactose intolerance and pet allergies, I don’t care, and a PSL can fuck me up anytime.

I pull out my earphones as I enter. Then it strikes me: I should’ve walked in pretending I listen to $uicideboy$ for breakfast and have heavy swag for brunch. I’m already wearing my best set of clothing: jeans, Vans and—wait for it,  _wait_ for it—a GOLF  _hoodie_. Epic! Fashion visionary! New Jersey Met Gala! This already means that I’m trying too hard.

But looking cool isn’t the only thing that worries me. I looked Armin up on Facebook last night, and found about three profiles completely void of any identifying pictures, so I have to admit I’m in the dark here. And… I don’t have his number. This is going to be awkward. All I know is his name and the not at all amusing fact that we used to go to high school together. He had brown hair… _maybe?_ He was one of the kids that got fiercely bullied, and as much as looking at them destroyed your swag, so I never did.

I scan the place. A chess set of juvenile white girls all stare at me and elbow each other when I smile out of discomfort. My pits are hot. I don’t like people who think they’re into me just because my face is arguably pretty. I eat pasta with my fingers. I drink  _clam juice_ and am emotionally unavailable. You wouldn’t love me at my worst.

The barista behind the counter has freckles and curly caramel hair; my arch nemesis, my Achilles heel. Her nametag reads ‘Dee, JUNIOR’. I decide to shoot my shot after five seconds of contemplation. Ordering something is the only reasonable way to get to talk to her, so I slide on the stool and lean on my forearms.

“Hey, um—Dee, is it?” I point at the drink in her hand when she looks over. “Hi. I think I want the same thing.”

Dee gives me a weird look and walks backwards to get the receipt. Her eyes scan the paper. “You sure?”

“I mean, it looks good. What?” I smile. “Why are you looking at me like that, what’s in it?”

She leans on the counter, closer to me. “It’s freaky. Flat White base with extra hot coconut milk, pistachio and blackberry syrup, caramel on top—customer note—forming a  _mandala_. Three dashes of cinnamon, and I  _have_ to stir it with a steel spoon. And he paid in change. Like,  _change_ change.”

“Who got that? He had to have a tough childhood.”

She snorts and nods towards the guy leaning against the counter. I look over to check, but the Versace hoodie and hair cover his profile. I would say he looks the same garbage way Justin Bieber has as of late with the beach blond hair and watery moustache.

I turn back to Dee. “Uptown rich kid.”

“Bet.”

“So you’re new? You work here alone?”

“I’ve been here for a week. Do you want anything? Coffee, tea, out of date cheesecake that I should chuck in the bin but instead take home?”

“You guys got iced teas?”

“Yeah. They gave me fuzzy peach on my first day. It’s pretty good if you like pulp in your OJ.”

“Okay, make it a large. Please.” I hold my card up between my fingers.

Dee’s hair bounces when she walks back to get both drinks done. I watch her for a while but grow bored and start checking the place out, throwing occasional glances over my shoulder so I don’t miss Armin. My phone claims he’s late. Disappointed, but not surprised!

“So you from down here?” Dee asks, stirring the drink. “You sound like you’re from the valley.”

“I picked up the valley thing from my Internet culture infused friend. Now I can’t get rid of it. But yeah, I live about twenty, twenty-five minutes away. You? You sound very south.”

“Alabama. Moved here two years ago because I binged on Jersey Shore and knew that was  _it.”_

“Wildwood isn’t the right place for the Snooki authenticity you’re looking for, we only got crackheads and sorority suicide pacts. Are you studying?”

“I dropped—“

“Excuse me, those were four dashes,” hoodie boy on my right interrupts, and Dee stops dead. Weird tension settles between all three of us. My first thought: cockblock.

“It wasn’t coming out,” Dee whips back.

“So call a health inspector and do a checkup to see whether there’s mold in that cinnamon shaker. You weren’t even looking. Do it over and refrain from flirting with your customer. I want my drink done right.”

I purposefully cough and turn to look at the guy talking. My two brain cells fuse into one—his face is so soft and feminine that it doesn’t really go well with the voice. Like King Krule—has anyone seen King Krule perform live? He looks twelve and sounds sixty.

“It’s fine, man, relax,” I carefully say, looking over at Dee whose entire face has gone dark. I could only imagine what it feels like to work in customer service. Never had a job gang. “It’s just cinnamon.”

“Cinnamon can cause mouth sores, low blood sugar, liver damage and disturb antibiotic and mental health medication effects,” the guy says. “Cinnamon has not once, but three times, rendered me immobile.”

“So maybe…not have cinnamon?” I suggest. “Like, at all? If cinnamon renders you  _immobile,_ just don’t risk it.”

He immediately picks up on my stuttering way of speaking and mocks it. “Are you suggesting I _not_ enjoy the small pleasures of life because someone in the food industry who gets paid for immaculate customer service can’t focus on it for one and a half minute?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Okay. You really rephrased that. You know what, I don’t want to go on with this.”

“Aww… Did your ex suffice with that kind of answer?”

My overtly emotional frown dunks into view. Personal insults make me jittery. “What? I don’t—first off, I’ve never had—“  _No, that’s gonna make me look real, real, real bad._ “Okay, look. Why don’t you just lay off and get your flat  _whatever_ white people drink at the Starbucks  _riiight_ across the freaking parking lot where people have more time for stuff like that?”

He leans over—and I flinch, because people don’t just lean in close to me that often, and whispers: “Eren, if you don’t shut up, I’ll put your address in every spam mail list.”

My lips wobble. “How do you know… OK. You’re god, confirmed.”

“I’m Armin, you fucking nutjob.”

I am about 100% convinced my face has somehow become the exact replica of Adam Sandler. Sandler has that “I was born yesterday and world is a fuck” kind of facial expression all the time, and there have been days I aspire to be more like him, but right now, staring at the platinum blonde Seventeen mag cover-looking bozo who  _supposedly_ is the Armin everyone hated not that long ago, I feel that I’ve become  _possessed_ by Sandler’s will and spirit.

“I’m Eren—the fucking nutjob.” I stretch my arm out for a handshake, but he slaps it away and pulls it below the counter.

“I  _know that,”_ Armin hisses. “Act like you hate me. I’m trying to score an awful caffeinated drink  _and_ a refund so that I can get a vegan avoc wrap, muster up the courage to go vinyl shopping with my lesbian mom and just get over the entire  _fucking_ day, god,  _thanks.”_

“You have a lesbian mom?” I ask. “Or is that like a metaphor?”

He frowns. “What could that  _possibly_ be a metaphor for?”

Acting like I hate Armin comes easy, because I literally do not know him. I watch him in awe as he eloquently battles a brown girl for a refund after deeming her coffee as “only subpar” and “barely digestible”, and “the cinnamon, the  _fucking_ cinnamon”. Ultimately, as Dee turns to me in exasperation, I just tell her to give him a refund. I don’t get her number, which was the main point of ordering anything, but she does hand me my iced tea with a “JERK” on it in black marker.

“What the  _fuck_ were you like that for?” I almost yell at Armin as we walk out in the plaza. “I had to stimulate so many of my two brain cells to understand a third of what you were saying to her.”

“I’m having hash withdrawal and everything is exceptionally irritating. My sweat slash cringe glands have gone  _rigid,”_ he explains, scratching around his septum piercing. “I want a Scoob-doob, Raggy.”

“A Scoob-doob…” I silently echo. “I’m losing my damn mind over here.”

“Shut up. But since you still look hurt about it, no, it wasn’t her, and you could’ve easily gotten her number if you weren’t dropped right after being born. I just hate food and drink chain corporations and how they treat employees, so I kinda steal from them as much as civilly possible and get away with it.”

“Because the customer is always right?”

“Right. A rule of thumb all of America abides to. Go to Europe, they’re too busy crying about religion and war crimes to organize a refund system. You can work around anything if you got the brains and time—although, taken Erwin wants us to  _hang_ to boost your mental ability,I’m guessing you have to thinkabout breathing to be able to breathe.”

“I have to warm up to people.” My fingers rub against the skateboard so tight the grip tape hurts my skin. “Have you heard of firsthand embarrassment? I  _got_ that.”

“What?” Armin frowns.

“Firsthand embarrassment.”

“You’ve really got to work on your figurative speech.”

“We can…get along without this roast sesh.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Okay.”

“You smoke weed?”

I choke. “Um, no. I get that a lot, though.”

 _“You_ get that a lot?” Armin rubs his eyes and snorts. “Do you think it could, I don’t know, maybe be due to the fact that you’re wearing exactly what every Sacramento stoner slash skater is?”

I look down at what I’m sporting. “This is just what people my age wear. Vans is the juvie brand of the century. And these are…pants. And a hoodie. I’m not your average skateboarder. I don’t ‘dress like a stoner’. I don’t ‘disrespect authority’.” I pause. “Oh. Okay, I get it, you’re just picking at me again.”

Armin pulls out his phone and swipes around it for a few seconds. Then he shows me an Instagram search page full to the brim of white boys wearing different color combinations of my exact outfit. “Location set as: Sacramento,” he proudly states. “And I’m supposed to be your life coach. You skate. You  _skate._ There’s types of people I’d love to weed out of this world and posers are at a surplus.”

I stop in the middle of the mall because the Adam Sandler feeling has worn off and I’ve just gotten reasonably upset. I look up at the glass ceiling, and then down, and then  _right_ at Armin. I _(heart eyes emoji)_ snap: “Maybe it’s gonna help you get down your high horse, you little fucking pinto bean. Don’t you  _ever_ forget you were  _nothing_ in high school. A Versace hoodie and piercings won’t fix the fact that no one wanted to be your friend—and I’m sure nothing has changed about that. You might’ve had spectacular grades, bud, and you  _deffo_ had a blast at chess club, but you also missed out on the pragmatic joy that skating with your best friends offers, never wrote bars at detention, never played Mortal Kombat in the living room handing the bad controller to the one dude that ollies a little better than you, never screamed along to Lil Jon nor cried to Tyler, The Creator, whining about your long-legged crush from senior year who is probably actually shallow and doesn’t even know you exist. So get a load of that, honeycakes. I grew up in a perfect suburban scenario that makes depression kick in only at 20, instead of 12, and I’m  _proud_ of that.”

Armin stares at me with the same expression that he had throughout my entire #personal #erentalks, and I immediately lose hope that I could’ve progressed towards the alpha position between us.

Suddenly, he laughs and pats at my bicep. “Relax, bubba. You really got your skater panties in a twist. We’ll get along fine.”

Confused, hurt, embarrassed, but all in all content, I reach out to pat him in return, which is definitely a  _friendly_ manner, and he slaps my hand away—for the second time today.

“But don’t fucking touch me, clown,” he grunts. “I hate that. Let’s go. I’ll spark up and we can scam some food.”

“Hit a nerve, bitch boy?”

“One more word and I’ll put you through that fucking wall.”

* * *

Dear diary, it’s me, the forever problematic Eren, and  _this_ right here is  _complete_ fucking  _tomfoolery!_

Although I’m completely convinced I’ll never return to the mall again, I can for a fact admit that Armin must major in law. Walking into a store pimped out in rich kid attire, he  _smells_ like success and Dior. Managers hate him. Click here to learn his secret. Well, fine, there’s not that much to it. It doesn’t go far beyond store policies available to the public eye, and earning a free meal is a Google search away if you’re white and privileged enough.

Armin is surprisingly talkative and almost nice after smoking weed, so I decide sobriety will not be what I hold against him. We stroll around the mall while he breaks down his plan on making me a “woke individual”, and that it  _undoubtedly_ involves smoking weed, cited, “if I had known, I’d have seen the Holy Ghost ages ago”, to which rose the question of  _what kind of fucking Holy Ghost_ Armin has been seeing. Admittedly I’m still hurt over that Sacramento skater thing, even though I’ve told myself millions of times that it’s to be expected; all I’m missing is a fanny pack slung over my shoulder, an indisputable and permanent acne treatment and a tattoo that says “YOU WERE MINE BUT SO WAS THE SUN”.

Or something.

My newfound buddy has chess practice in the evening, so I walk him to his stop and we exchange numbers. Meeting Armin feels like a colorful commercial after which I’m forced to return to the sad melodrama I was watching and completely forgot about. I tiptoe around the “no touching” rule and inadvertly fistbump his chest, thinking it couldn’t be  _that_ bad, and our idyllic, injury-free meeting takes a turn—he slaps me right on my fucking cheek,  _right_ on the fucking baby fat where it hurts like my little tummy when I land in the community pool face first.

Shock comes first, then, a wave of heat, then, an unasked, unreasonable boner situation, and then I go: “You just did what literally everyone around me has been dreaming to do since I YMCA’d my way out of my mother.”

Armin, of course, apologizes, several times at that, and though it’s a gratifying feeling to be told “I’m sorry” a million times, his completely expressionless face unnerves my little body.

Once he’s gone, I slowly roll back to the mall with my earphones back in, listening to Broken Social Scene and already wallowing in the superior feeling of “I’m mainstream and disgusting but  _aware_ of it”, which kind of automatically plants me higher than the average simpleton of Sacramento, or what have you. Whatever Armin was mindlessly going on about the entire time, I sucked it all up somehow, and feel…full. It’s either I have to land a  _phat_ No. 2 real soon, or meet up with someone and erode their feeble opinion of me, but it’s awfully likely to be both—in that very order.

I pull out my phone, ready to clown, and look up my text conversation with Levi.

 **[6:02 PM, Saturday] Eren:**   _What is up you funky little pinto bean_

 **[6:02 PM, Saturday] Eren:**   _Wanna hang out pussyboiiiiii?_

**[6:03 PM, Saturday] Eren:** _Ok lets pretend I NEVER texted that_

**[6:03 PM, Saturday] Eren:** _Anyway I’m literally aging as we speak and you should come to the mall/beach because I’m boredt as shiii_

**[6:03 PM, Saturday] Eren:** _You owe me one anyway cuz I went home really late that night lmao_

I reread everything I sent and curse myself for always multiple texting.

 **[6:06 PM, Saturday] Eren:**   _Can you please reply to me this is already more embarrassing than it could be and if u ghost me I promise my spirit will haunt you and ruin your family grill Saturdays by tossing the patties back on the cooked side so that they burn but are also raw and inedible_

Luck winks at me as I find a completely fine, untouched Snickers on the bench by the fountains. And there goes my time: thirty minutes spent as a total loser in the mall, waiting for a text back. I have been waiting for people to text me back my  _entire lyfe._ My phone will be dry even in the afterlife.  _And_ —when I die, instead of my friends posting “RIP” on my Facebook wall, someone will  _absolutely_ invite me to like their electronic music page.

Exactly when I realize it’s time to go home, my phone goes off with Levi’s contact name on top of the screen. I chew my Snickers in the speed of light and flick my finger across the screen to answer the call.

_“Hey! I just got in the car, left my phone here, this never happens—I thought you were dying. Where are you? How are you? I'm heading in the very vague direction of the mall in about…right when I find my goddamned keys.”_

“What kind of a millennial are you, leaving your phone in your car? Do you genuinely want to hang, or do you feel sorry for me now that I’ve been here waiting for about forty minutes now?”

 _“I just got—“_ Levi struggles. It sounds like he’s climbing a mountain.  _“—work, just got off work, found my keys, am on my way. Oh, fuck.”_ He sighs.  _“I’m so tired. Let me sit here for a second.”_

For some reason, my mood drops. “Work?”

_“Well, you know. That stuff.”_

“The  _stuff_ stuff? Wait, hold up, I don’t  _want_ to see your sex glow, I’m gonna barf.”

Levi breathily laughs.  _“Did Carla send you to Bible camp? Stop being so stuffed up about it. You can probably name more porno sites than me.”_

“True.”

_“Where exactly are you? I’m thinking of parking by the beach so it’s not that long a walk.”_

“Uh,  _yeah,_ but that costs money,” I comment. “Mall parking is free and you have legs, which also happen to be free, I’m guessing.”

_“Are you paying for my parking?”_

“No, but you’re cultivating capitalistic behavior, and I just can’t justify that. I’m kidding. I’m sitting right next to Lush. I can feel every single employee directing manic energy towards me.”

_“Can you wait?”_

“It depends. How long? I’m afraid I’ll have splurged on bath bombs and, like, two hair treatments if you take more than ten minutes.”

Levi takes more than ten minutes since  _I_ took him for granted, but when I notice him finally walking towards me from the parking lot, something inside me combusts, and every minute is automatically made up for. Thank godI’m wearing noise-cancelling earphones, because this is  _loud._ I wouldn’t comment on his appearance unless asked, but I feel too biased for objective thinking: I’m not quite sure if he  _expected_ my already questionable sexual orientation to crumble like chalk, but for a guy in his thirties, he looks… He looks really good. His cheeks are just a little pink and his hair is uncharacteristically slicked back—bold move—and wet, he’s wearing washed out jeans and a white t-shirt, both very snug, and the total of that is that I’m uncomfortable and ninety-nine cents.

“Wow, you look stuffed!” is what my idiot mouth first decides to go with.

Levi immediately snorts and turns around to walk away. I get up right away and scurry to his side.

“What—is— _popping?”_ I accompany every word with a clap, trying to ignore his  _obviously_ good mood. “You really look like you just found out you can photosynthesize.”

“It must be my pregnancy glow,” he says. “I’m due, like, right now, any second.”

“What’s the name?”

“I’m thinking of Shoveled Burger King Down My Throat, or, uh, Ran A Red Light While Doing So.”

I cover my mouth. “Wow, that’s  _so_ exotic… Your  _mind._ Heart eyes emoji. One hundred emoji. Is it that you just got drilled, or am I really seeing color in those cheeks, My Honor?”

Levi runs his hand through his hair; the motion itself makes me even more unreasonably emotional, but he also frowns to make it even  _more_ confusing. “I’ll start crying if you keep bringing it up.”

“Oh.” I slow down. “Sorry?”

“No, it’s almost fine. I’m glad I drove out here, I needed the company. Today has been long and awful.”

“I thought you were feeling great?” That’s it, I probably said something wrong, unless he’s experiencing a sudden tummy ache, which is always forgivable.

“I…” He looks at me and shakes his head. “Yeah. I don’t know. Why is your left cheek like that?”

“Like what?”

Levi yanks at my hoodie and pulls me in the direction of a Forever 21. The whiplash of Arctic Monkeys merch takes me like a storm.

“Are we going shopping?” I blurt. “Because I need new boxers and a dress shirt, the one mom got me is kinda—“

He guides me to a mirror and sticks his finger right onto my red cheek. “That.”

“Oh, I got bitch slapped across the planet.”

“By who?”

“It’s actually ‘by whom’. I’ve known that for about two hours. Erwin told my mom I’m doing awful at school and now I have something you would call a private inspirational speaker who does private bitch slaps whenever I touch him.”

“I’m not going to ask where or how you touched him because that is just _weird,_ Eren,” Levi says, walking back out of the store.

“Ew.” I longingly stare over my shoulder. “Can we go check the shirts? Not only did he bitch slap me; he also told me hurtful things about the way I dress, so I want to, like, never dress like myself again.”

“Since when do you listen to what other people have to say?”

“Since you… Since I’m hanging out with you at the fucking mall, that’s what…” I struggle, “the fuck is up.”

Levi shakes his head and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Okay.”

“Are you not going to look at any of this stuff?” I ask, but immediately remember it’s Forever 21, and that Levi is about thirty years old—therefor more or less nine years behind being Forever 21.

“I shop online.”

“You shop online?”

“…yes?”

“How do you get the sizing right?”

“I measure myself because I go to the gym and normal online clothing stores have measurements, so…” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t like physical shopping.”

I clack my tongue and pick up a hanger. “But we’re out here, at the mall, doing exactly that.”

Levi takes the hanger with the shirt out of my hands and hangs it back on the rack. “So let’s leave.”

“I  _liked_ the shirt,” I murmur as he nudges me to the exit.

“You have at least five shirts like that at home and it cost unreasonably much.”

“Levi, you own clothes far more expensive than a ten buck shirt.”

We leave the mall after Levi gets us drinks at the parking lot Starbucks, winking emoji. I get another iced tea and he gets something funky called cold brew.

It’s humid outside, as it always goes with the shoreline, and my skin tingles knowing summer is just trotting right towards New Jersey. The walk to the beach is pleasant. Sun is low and streets are full of people glad that it’s getting warm enough to ditch the jackets. There are some pop-up stalls selling cotton candy and ice cream. Further on, the street turns into a boardwalk leading almost right up to the shore where it’s considerably breezier now that we’re not shielded by buildings.Because of this, we drop by Levi’s family car so he could get his coaching hoodie. He looks almost abnormally young wearing it.

“So is it fine by you that we’re hanging out?” I ask, huddled up in my own hoodie that I pulled and tied the strings of.

“Do you mind?”

“I don’t. I was just thinking… Well, not _just_ thinking. I kinda kept myself up at night sweating it, T-B-H. I’m just… I kind of fucking spilled them _beans_ on Thursday, and it felt really nice finally talking about it to someone that wasn’t a middle school counselor going through her fourth divorce.”

“Oh, was Ms. Krissy divorced?”

“Yup.”

“She’s been on Tinder a lot.”

I take a big sip of my iced tea and smack my lips. _“Sis._ You know what Tinder is? That app is giving me nightmares. I once swiped right on my cousin and Thanksgiving has never been the same.”

“I’m guessing it was an accident,” Levi silently comments.

I ugly snort. _“Yes._ Yes, it was. Do I look like I come from Bumfuck, Alabama? Also—thanks for ignoring my Thursday night sentimentality.”

“I’m not ignoring it, I’m just not talented at conversation,” he says. “But I agree. It was nice to wind down. I hadn’t had a chance to just kick back and talk to someone without having them think I walk around carrying every STD known to man.”

“Who said I don’t think that?” I snicker.

Levi stays silent and drinks his cold brew. We keep walking. I watch him closely and realize I could’ve easily not said what I just said.

“You know I don’t _actually_ think that, right?”

“I was hoping you don’t. It’s just…” He sighs. “It’s hard expecting people to care about sex workers and not jump on every stereotype when they have no background on it. It’s just generally—I don’t know, it’s frowned upon, and it doesn’t help that all these ‘sex positive’ people in privileged spaces co-opt the slut aesthetic when it’s cool or convenient.”

“Like the sugar daddy stuff and ‘dang, VS just launched a new bra set but it’s out of my price range, so let’s just literally fucking sell pictures of my feet’, yeah, _that’s_ fun. That’s me saving up for Red Dead Redemption 2.”

Levi surprises me by smiling—but he doesn’t say anything.

“What?” I nudge his shoulder. “Why do you look like that?”

“I’m just smiling.”

“This occurs once every red moon, don’t even try.”

“You’re steadily becoming the only person I want to talk to outside of the sex worker community and Erwin,” he says. “So let me be happy for a second.”

Cheers, bro. I’ll drink to that. My head is spinning: I have been elected ‘the only person’ for the first time in my life! It doesn’t matter that it’s visceral, it only matters that I’m finally ‘the only person’ regarding literally anything. I only drink canned Arnold Palmer and beat my dick, so this feels like a job promotion.

“Alright, so lay it on _thick,_ then!” I yell, practically skipping ahead of him. “I’ll be your Dear Diary and right hand man. You listened to me cry about trivial stuff, and the most touching thing someone can do is listen to me crying about trivial stuff—hereby, I declare us homies for life. Imagine this as, like, a mutually exclusive brand deal.”

“Is there some kind of blood pact or ritual joint?”

“We can just drink each other’s stuff like white people do at their wedding. That should do.”

Levi stops dead on the boardwalk and lifts his arm so that I can wring my own around it, and we both unattractively slurp each other’s drinks. Levi’s tastes like literal ass, and taken he’s pulling a stink face, mine isn’t better. Silently champing, we reach the end of the boardwalk. It has recently rained. The sand is all covered in tiny dents all over, and still feels cold and damp when I kneel down to touch it.

“The sand is wet enough not to get inside my shoes and give me fifty blisters, but I’m going barefoot anyway,” I declare.

“Okay.” Levi kicks off his own shoes. “Barefoot in April sounds like I’m going to have the flu.”

“No one is making you go barefoot, you freaking drama queen.”

“I don’t want you to look stupid walking barefoot alone.”

“Levi, you’re truly years behind. I look stupid doing _anything.”_

It’s fucking windy. Levi’s hair dries up in a second and turns into a frizzy mess, which leads me to think he definitely straightens his hair. I would know. I spent all middle school listening to As I Lay Dying and straightening my fucking black tips; how _ever,_ since my hair is coarse and unruly, it just never looked right. It looked like someone had attached a Party City wig to my scalp.

My feet are freezing. Surely I’m not going to say it.

“What did you first think when you found out?” Levi asks, kneeling to cuff his jeans.

“Found out what?”

“That I do porn.”

All of my ‘Eren is nervous’ indicators go off: I scratch below my nose, dig my hand in my hair and try to remember the holy guideline of ‘WWASD’—short for ‘What Would Adam Sandler Do’.

“I was bored,” I say. “And I wanted to broaden my horizon, just in case I ever drop out of school and lose aim in life, consecutively beginning to do porn.”

He frowns. “I hope you’re kidding.”

“Kinda.”

“Kinda?”

“I mean, do I have the potential? Absolutely. I’ve always thought it’s the job every man dreams of. Imagine having orgasms for a living. That’s fuckin’ wild.”

Levi points at a dry spot in the sand in silence, and I figure we could sit here. I throw my skateboard and plop down on it like a wet sock. Levi sits on the ground and leans against his knees.

“Maybe having the potential is not that good of a thing,” he mumbles. “That’s how it always goes. You start with some modeling gig and end up in total jeopardy. Even though it doesn’t necessarily have to be ugly, I was off to a rough start. I never had the freedom of choice because I had college loans, an apartment whose bills I had to foot, and, well, you know how it goes; a girl’s gotta eat. So I jumped right into mainstream factory porn fueled by systematic abuse, rape, misconduct and fraud. The hourly pay was laughable and I got dragged through dirt by family and friends. I had never been so unhappy in my life.”

I dig my toes in the sand. “That doesn’t sound quite like what I imagined.”

“Nothing is ever like it seems. Right now I’m scared that Nile is here on a casting mission more than he is genuinely interested in coaching. But if you’re ever looking into it, ethical porn is an emerging genre. That’s what I’m trying to do, anyway.”

“Ethical porn?”

“Yeah. Mainstream porn lives off of sexual abuse and misogyny, bad work environment and non-consensual stuff. The amount of people I’ve seen crying on set, me included, is just fucking absurd. Sex, while fun, is also complicated. It’s not about winning. It’s not a competitive sport.”

“Looking a little upset there,” I say, to lighten the atmosphere, and it works; Levi smiles, though slightly.

“I hope at least some of this makes sense to you.”

“Yeah, yeah, it does. It just blows me away that I’m over here whining because I’ve never slept with anyone, which has always been my own decision _anyway,_ while there are people out there to whom doing porn is literally the only means of survival.”

“Don’t feel bad about it. The best you can do is educate yourself and support a healthier image of sex work. Sex work, in itself, is not problematic, it’s the masses that condone it.”

I sigh. “Man. Today feels like a Blue’s Clues episode. I think I’m gonna cry and eat something unhealthy when I get home.”

Levi reaches out and pats on my shoulder. “Hey. I know you’re struggling right now, but I’m here to tell you everything gets worse forever.”

“Can I rant?”

“Of course. It’s legible according to our post-modern pact.”

“I’m just gonna fucking go at it. Have you ever felt like you hate your parents because they never…gave you any sense of responsibility? Lately it’s been very hard to swallow the fact that me being afraid of responsibility is basically at fault for everything wrong in my life. Because of that, I’m literally crashing. Like, I’ve never had a job, I can’t have relationships and I live with my parents because re: all of the above—and, to top it off, I think I have seasonal depression.”

“You don’t have to implement all of it at once,” Levi says after a while of thinking. “It would be too overwhelming to suddenly take up so many different things.”

“I’m already overwhelmed by doing nothing.”

“Studying and going to soccer practice is quite enough. Don’t forget you’re factually a paid professional athlete. If it really bugs you that much, I say you pick up some part-time job until you graduate. Once you’re done with college, you’ll have a lot more time on your hands. It’s hard now, but it won’t get easier. Or better. In fact, it really just gets worse.”

I dig around in the sand, frowning. “I hate how you’re always right about everything.”

Levi shakes his head. “I’m not always right.”

“Yeah, maybe not,” I agree, “but the impact you’ve left on me and our team is remarkable and you should take more credit for it. You’re a really good guy. I’m glad you didn’t let that whole porn shit break your spirit.”

“That whole porn shit,” he slowly quotes.

“Yes. I have the vocabulary of a fifth grader, and I don’t care.”

We sit at the beach until it gets dark. We bicker about him driving me home, to which I ultimately object, because the whole point of having a skateboard is to skate with it. However, he insists on it as if it were some luxury and lures me in by saying he would let me have the aux cord. While listening to Onyx, Levi admits that he would kill a puppy for a White Russian. To me, a White Russian sounds like the utmost disgusting cocktail on the world: who the _hell_ puts cream and vodka together? Are white people really this damn faulty? Everyone knows Long Island Iced Tea is _the_ superior drink. One tall glass and I will do just about anything.

Levi pulls up by my house right when Toni Braxton’s Un-Break My Heart starts playing, so, naturally, as it goes with me, a man of color and culture, I stay in his car for four minutes and thirty seconds to scream the entirety of the song.

When I get inside the house, I catch mom watching TV with Mikasa sleeping on her lap. The sight is so endearing that I make an Instagram story out of it.

My very late dinner consists of microwaved leftover meatballs, no spaghetti, and Mountain Dew.

Something inside me feels very warm. For a second I wonder whether it’s really that everything happens for a reason—and what would possibly be the outcome of this, whatever _this_ is, anyway. I lie in bed thinking about it. I roll around bed thinking about it.

I pull out my phone and tap out a heartfelt:

**[11:32 PM, Saturday] Eren:** _Thanks that was wholesome and I’m glad that we are officially homies! :-)_

To which, not even a minute later, comes the reply of:

**[11:32 PM, Saturday] Coach:** _The feeling is mutual_

**[11:32 PM, Saturday] Coach:** _:-)_


End file.
